


Little Ghost

by magiiicath



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (kinda), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Older!Gendrya, Slow Burn, and gendrys there too, basically arya is stuck in kings landing instead of sansa, i'm sorry if i suck at synopsis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28948620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magiiicath/pseuds/magiiicath
Summary: It's been less then two months of Ned Stark's execution. Arya has been held by the Lannisters in King's Landing when she's forced to a marriage she could have never antecipated. Now, she's wife to a mysterious guard of the Red Keep named Gendry and has to try to deal with what has become her life while dreaming of a way to escape it.
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 140
Kudos: 259





	1. unlike most you don't miss a thing

**Author's Note:**

> always keep in mind while reading this that english is not my first language, so pardon me for any mistake you might find.
> 
> the title and every chapter name come's from birdy's strange birds

_Unlike most, you don't miss a thing._

_You see the thuth._

They don’t move them from her bedchamber, which makes sense to Arya. It was on this featherbed she had lain on when she arrived at King’s Landing, it had been these walls she stared at without managing to sleep when her father was taken as prisoner and it had been those pillows she had wet with her tears when he was executed. So of course this would be where one more chapter of the tragedy that became her life would take place.

At least she’s thankful that no one tried to initiate the bedding. She thinks that it was her new lord husband’s sullen face and unwelcoming posture that didn’t tempt anyone to drag them to their bedchambers.

He’s a tall, burly man, with hair as dark as night time and a sharp jaw that could inspire sighs on the coldest of girls. Arya herself had never been one to daydream about romance, like her sister and her friends, but she thinks she might have fawned herself over this man, had the circumstances been different. Had he been someone other than a guard to the Red Keep and one of King Joffrey’s most loyal servants.

Ser Gendry Sterling had never given her an unkind word. He had never done a bad thing to her either, where many of King Joffrey’s guards hadn’t cared about treating her decently. At least not after her father’s execution, three months ago.

But even if he treated her more gently than the others, Ser Gendry still was one of the most important guards inside that palace. As far as she heard, he’d probably have been offered the Kingsguard by now if it wasn’t complete already.

Instead, she’s now wedded to him.

The idea of marriage had never sat right on her. She always dreaded that day to come, when she was going to be wed to a complete stranger and be expected to blindly obey and deliver him an heir. The day she was going to be traded like a piece of land, for the good of her family’s name or an alliance inside a war. The day she’d start to be consumed by all the things she  _ couldn’t be _ , until the things she  _ was _ were forced out of her.

Arya hated the thought of that day, but she had expected it to come. She had always kept in mind she’d do it for her family and that her father would do his best to find someone who’d be kind to her. It didn’t make the pain go away, but it had brought her some comfort in all of seventeen days of her name. But this little consolation had been erased when she had been forced upon a marriage to a Baratheon guard. 

And now she has a handmaiden helping her to get rid of the wedding dress and to slide her nightgown on her body. She tries very hard to stay quiet and not show any sign of how anxious she feels, even if anyone would have felt nervous in her place.

She wishes she had someone here she could talk to. That was one of the thoughts she had more often there. As a child, she had been impulsive and hot tempered and she had lost some of it, but at seventeen, she still was as talkative as at childhood. Or at least, she was until she became a prisoner in that place. Since then, she had learned to keep every thought, weep and curse to herself, fearing she might get heard by the wrong person. She trusted no one there.

But right now, she wishes she could talk honestly to anyone. She wants her mother, her sister, even Septa Mordane. Anyone that could bring her some comfort or a friendly word. She knows that Beth, her handmaid, is friendly enough, but she is too scared to mention her fear to the girl. What if she says something that sounds just wrong, just like she is a traitor?

Before Arya can construct a sentence that’d ask for comfort without leaving risks to her, Beth finishes the braid she had been doing on Arya’s hair and asks to be excused. And then she’s gone and Arya is alone again, her stomach flipping in a sickening way that makes her glad she had been too nervous to eat at the feast.

She tries to keep herself from trembling while she goes to the featherbed, her mind concentrating on every step so she couldn’t think about how large Ser Gendry was and how he could easily overpower her. She tries to swallow.

“This doesn’t scare me”, Arya says out loud to herself, hoping it might make her confident, but her voice is so little and so weak that it has the opposite reaction. She  _ is _ scared. She wishes she could be braver, but this is not only one night and one bedding. It’s the beginning for what could be an ever worse life for her.

_ He won’t hurt you, he never did before _ , she sighs deeply and before she can do more to try and calm herself, the door to the bedchamber is opened.

Arya is tucked under the sheets, feeling more exposed than she ever did in her entire life. Her eyes won’t meet Ser Gendry’s immediately and when she raises her head, he’s not looking at her. He’s wearing a nightshirt, very alike her own nightgown, and she swallows again, noticing that he’s as exposed as her.

“Lady Arya,” he begins in an unnatural way, like he has been rehearsing it before entering the room. “I am very sorry for this”

Arya didn’t have a clue where he was going when he called her name, but she certainly didn’t expect that.

“I know this is not what you wish for yourself and you deserve more than a low-born guard,” he stops and gulps and when his eyes finally meet hers, she understands he’s just as anxious as her. “But know that I’ll do everything in my power to honor your Ladyship”

He stands there, making no mention to get anywhere near and Arya feels something agitate inside her. She fears it might be hope.

“I don’t care about being a Lady, Ser Gendry,” she responds lowly, her voice coming out stronger than when she was alone. “It never did much for me”

“Don’t call me that”

“Don’t call you what?” she can’t help the curiosity that springs within her, adding one more feeling to her already overwhelmed mind. It doesn’t distract her completely from her nervousness, though. He’s staring at some point of the bed now.

“ _ Ser _ , don’t call me that” Arya can see that he had grimaced, even if he kept his head down. “I’d prefer if you called me just Gendry”

She supposes it makes sense. He’s now her husband and it wouldn’t feel right to keep calling him Ser, even if none of this felt right. “Will you call me Arya, then?”

He looks at her with wide blue eyes, seemingly startled in an almost childish way. A smile briefly escapes her at the sweetness of his movement. She might not be sure if he is to be trusted, but she can feel his honesty at the gesture.

“I suppose,” he sounds surprised by the notion. A moment passed before he spoke again, measuring every word. “Can I sit by your side, Arya?” 

She feels like she can almost smile again and she knows that the hope that germinated on her earlier is making roots. She shakes her head in agreement and watches as he hesitantly takes little steps to sit on the very edge of the other side of her—their—featherbed.

A moment passes and they don’t say anything. Arya can see him more clearly than ever from distance, how his black hair seems incredibly soft and a small lock loose from the rest of the hair falls on a gentle curl. She can’t help but observe how his face looks soft to touch—even when his jaw is tensed up like that—while she waits for his next movement, not sure what to expect from him anymore.

Gendry scratches the back of his head, still not meeting her eyes and she knows he is nervous and if it wasn’t for her own anxiety, she knows she’d find him adorable. She was right before, she could have fawned over him had they met in another life.

“We don’t— We won’t—” he stutters and she waits. He sighs deeply before continuing. “I meant it when I said I want to honor and respect you. And I don’t come here to force you to anything. I won’t even ask if I can touch you because I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be the one that you wed,” Gendry pauses once more. “If you allow me, I’ll share this bed with you, but only for the sake of appearances. I’ll be your husband in name and for the rest world, but that will be it”

By the time he is finished, Gendry finally locks his gaze with Arya’s and she feels that same hope of before getting stronger, even if she hadn’t permitted it. She stares at him, trying to find in his eyes that fakeness she didn’t think hard to see in most people in that place. She had always been intuitive about people and, at least in that moment, she feels like she could trust Gendry. Or maybe she just wants it very desperately.

“I—” she tries, not sure what to say to him. Even if she can see his honesty, what if it’s all a scam? What if he is trying to get her trust so she’d say something that would lead to a treason accusation? Or what if he suddenly changes his mind about being respectful?

But somehow, Gendry seems to understand her wishes when the only thing she manages to verbalize is a vacillating word. He’s standing before she tries to speak something and his steps away from the bed are more determined than when he was approaching. She looks while he makes his way back to the door.

“Where will you sleep?” Arya asks when he’s about to open the door-lock. He turns to look at her and she feels something completely different agitate inside with his eyes on her. For some reason, she’s pleased to notice he had done it without hesitation this time.

“In my old chambers, I think,” he shrugs, nonchalantly. “As I did before”

She nods shortly, thinking how strange this would be. This was supposed to be  _ their _ bedchambers now, not hers alone. And something would be made of it soon enough, she knows that. But she is relieved that this night would be hers alone and that he’s giving her this.

“Thank you, Gendry,” she sounds more confident than she felt for the whole night and it makes a small smile come across her.

And she sees that Gendry has a grin, much as hers, when he leaves her alone in their bedchamber on their wedding night.

* * *

Arya was right to think they wouldn’t let Gendry keep distance from their bedchamber for much longer and that’s why she allows him—when he humbly asks—to sleep there the following evening.

They lay on the same bed, as distant as physically possible while sharing the same furs. Each of them face the opposite side of one another and Arya feels a tension between them, nothing like she’d ever felt before.

She doesn’t trust him.

But she learns that she likes him.

Gendry had helped her on more than one occasion before any talk of wedding existed. She remembers how he was the one who took her to her bedchambers after her father’s execution. She remembers how he enquired about her wellbeing in the days that followed.

But somehow she still didn’t expect how he cares about her. She wouldn’t expect that tenderness in a million lifetimes, not from a guard of King Joffrey’s and certainly not from a husband. 

He politely asks about her day every evening, when he finds her in their bedchambers. Always making her feel like he doesn’t want to pressure her to answer, which she appreciates.

Arya never has much to tell him, though. Her days are filled with the nothingness that life at court obliges her to. She wishes she could spend her days sparring in the courtyard, exploring the Red Keep and King’s Landing like she was so excited to do when she arrived at the city. But now she was a hostage, guarded at all times and never truly alone. All she did was go from one futile reunion of futile ladies to another and then to her bedchambers. 

But still, every night, Ser Gendry seems so genuinely interested in her. He makes her feel like, maybe, even if they can’t truly be friends they can be some sort of companions.

Still, she preferred the nothingness of days over the fulfilled with bad dreams night.

She was used to having agitated, wild dreams, where she was inside Nymeria’s skin. Even after she had gone South and her adored pet direwolf stayed behind, in Winterfell, she still had the same dreams, all the distance meaning very little.

But this was  _ before _ . Before her father had received a traitor’s death. Now, all she could dream about was that day, that moment he had lost his head and his life and Arya felt like she had lost hers as well.

Arya saw his every night, telling her to escape, telling her to stay, telling her he was sorry. She dreaded every single of these words. She didn’t wish to forget her father, but she’d prefer if at least her dreams had kept the same.

She supposes she must be as agitated with the nightmares as Sansa always complained about with her wolf dreams, because almost every night, she hears Gendry’s soft voice calling her up, trying to snap her out of the bad dreams. Even then, he never touches her.

“Are you alright?” he asks without turning to her side, his tone more tranquilizing than she’d expect. She has her eyes opened now, staring at the tapestry hanging on the wall, just by the door. She probably won’t stop staring at the tapestry for the rest of the night, until she’s once again overtaken by the need to sleep.

“I’m fine, thank you for waking me” she whispers back. Not for the first time, she wants to speak with him, tell him about her nightmares or, better yet, something completely different that will take Ned’s voice off of her min. Most times, she’d just dismiss the urge of talking to him and keep looking at the wall, even if it was too dark to distinguish the figures on the tapestry. She’d keep listening to Gendry’s breath getting slower and slower, until he was asleep again, and then she’d kept listening to it, concentrating on the ins and outs and how peaceful he seemed, even when she couldn’t actually see him.

But one night, that didn’t happen. He was just as awake as her, she could feel his tension. So, she broke the silence for the first time:

“Gendry?” she calls hesitantly. She expects him to just mumble anything sleepily, but he’s “Yeah?” is very clear.

“Could you—” Arya stops herself before continuing, realizing suddenly what she was about to ask. She’s so happy to have the right to be reserved, she should give him just the same right.

When she doesn’t finish her request, he’s the one to break the silence, “Arya?”

It feels so intimate, when he calls her by her first name. Weirdly more than when she does the same to him. She thinks it’s because everyone that used to call her just Arya in King’s Landing isn’t around anymore. “Could I what?”

She sighs, because now that she started, she thinks she’s going to get what she wants.

“Could you tell me something about yourself?” Because she wants to get rid of the images that won’t let her sleep, but also because she’s curious about him. She’s married to a man she had never heard about. Even the gossipy ladies at court didn’t have much information on him, besides the comments on his appearance and resemblance with the most important set of brothers of Westeros (she’d asked, weeks before her father’s execution).

He stays silent and Arya fears she overstepped. He has been so good to her, even if it was in such a distant way, and here she is, asking for more. She wishes she could see his face now, so she could try to read his expressions.

“I’m so sorry,” she stutters in a way she’s not used to. “I didn’t mean to intrude, for—”

“I was a blacksmith,” Gendry interrupts her, his low voice sending an unprompted shiver down her body.

“What?”

“I was a blacksmith. Before I came to the Red Keep,” he doesn’t say more and a million thoughts cross Arya’s mind because of those two sentences. She wants to ask so much more, about where he came from, about his family and about his last name. But what she does ask is much simpler:

“Were you any good?”

She feels when the featherbed shifts with his movement and she knows he just shrugged and she smiles.

“Think so. I was an apprentice not so long ago,” Arya feels something inside her clenching with the humbleness in the way he says it.

“Do you have anything you’ve done to show me?” she asks, her light excitement very clear for both of them.

“Well, yeah,” he sounds shy, even when he’s not looking directly at her. “I’ve made my sword”

Arya feels her eyes getting wider at his revelation. She had caught a glimpse of his sword once, when she’d had crossed him around the Keep, before they were wed. She had thought it looked like a beautiful weapon from that distance, even if she didn’t understand the subject as much as she wished. 

“Can you show me tomorrow?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

“Of course, if you want to”

“I’d love to,” she meant it sincerely.

After that, they both feel silent, but it was much easier for Arya to sleep, her head now filled with something to expect for the next day, the idea of Gendry blacksmithing and how his curious last name, Sterling, was a close word to steel.

* * *

The thing that made Arya linger on Gendry’s last name was that she’d never heard it before coming to King’s Landing.

She’d studied all the great houses of Westeros and their sworns and even if it wasn’t easy to keep all the names into memory, she thinks she’d know if she ever heard the name Sterling.

And now there he was, that imposing figure carrying a name she’d never heard and a life no one knew anything of.

Before her father’s death, Ser Gendry had caught her eyes, but even more, her ears.

More than once, while Arya was around the Red Keep, she had heard him call her  _ m’lady _ , which was supposed to be normal, coming from a commoner, but maybe not from him.

Because he had a family name and, if her facts were correct—and she got them from the rumors on court, so they might not be—, he had been ward of one of King Robert’s brothers. It was uncommon behavior of someone with a rank as such to call her m’lady. She didn’t mind, but it made her curious.

And, finally, there was the main talk.

It had been stronger the moment Ser Gendry arrived at court, brought by Lord Renly Baratheon, the younger of the brothers, to be one of the King’s men, part of the guard.

Anyone could see it was as if Gendry shared too much of appearance with all the Baratheons to be ignored. He had a name no one ever heard of, given him by Lord Renly with King’s Robert blessing, and it raised gossip about them being related. How, exactly, no one seemed to know.

Was he of distant family or was he a bastard child of one of the most important members of the house? They had no way of certainties on the subject.

Lord Renly himself only referred to the boy as his old ward, now a great knight of the realm. And Ser Gendry talked even less, not only about his past but about all subjects in general. He seemed to be interested in his guard duties and that alone.

That was everything that Arya had known about him when she discovered she was to marry him.

It wasn’t all that different from all brides knew of their betrothed when a wedding was arranged like that, she supposed, but it still seemed like too little. She had been curious about him before, and now that he was her husband, she wanted to know even more.

All her life, she thought that the more distant she was of her husband, the happier she’d be. And her prudency did lean her in that direction, never too close to him because knowing more of him would lead to him knowing more of her, but everyone knew that Arya Stark was  _ not _ all prudency, and she wished to know more of him.

She could never explain why, but it felt right even before Gendry was her husband.

It was the challenge and the curiosity and the fact that no one seemed to see the same as her.

The people on that Keep saw a scandal waiting to be discovered, a new subject to distract them from the War they were in, but Arya saw a young man, not older than her eldest brother. A quiet man, out of place among all these people and a figure that caught her attention between the Seven damned Hells her life had become.

That was all she could put in words so far.

Not that anyone had asked her something. Most people she crossed pretended they didn’t know she was now wed. She was still Lady Stark for most of them; no one called her by her husband’s name.

In part because it was unusual, the circumstances of her wedding. It’s not common to hear of a daughter of a great house like hers marrying a palace guard with not much of a past.

But she didn’t care.

At this moment, all she cared about was waiting for Gendry’s arrival at their bedchambers.

She was sitting in front of the looking glass, Beth helping her prepare her long brown hair for the sleep, much like every night. Only this time, her eyes would jump to the reflection of the door, waiting for the moment her husband would enter.

“You’re feeling well, m’lady?” 

Arya looks away from the door’s reflection to see Beth staring at her hand holding tight on her nightgown. She hadn’t even noticed she was doing it.

“I’m fine, Beth,” she smiles at the woman. “Just distracted,” Beth nods and continues her work on Arya’s hair.

Arya was glad for Beth. While they did not discuss matters of Arya’s family or King Joffrey or the War, Beth was good at keeping her company—thank the gods, since Arya wasn’t supposed to go anywhere without her maid.

Most days, Beth told Arya about what happened in the kitchens, what a servant had done and her own family in King’s Landing. And Arya was glad to listen to every bit, desperate for ounces of normality. It all made her long for Winterfell and her parents and siblings. It made her miss every person she could no longer see, since Maester Luwin and his lectures to Mycah, the butcher’s son who had become her friend.

It was painful, but somehow a comfort too.

She wanted to remember them, remember the life she once had, the life she was so distant now.

Beth’s simplicity brought back Arya’s, even if they lived complete different lives.

“Do you need anything else, m’lady?”

Arya looks at herself in the looking glass, her hair now in the long braid she was used sleeping with.

“No, I do—”

Before she replies, they hear a soft knock on the door.

“May I come in?” It is Gendry’s low voice and Arya is standing before he has even finished his phrase.

“You may,” she says with barely contained excitement and immediately turning to Beth and saying, “You are dismissed for the night, Beth”.

Her maid makes a small courtesy before leaving the chamber, while Gendry enters the room.

He always knocks at the door, even if that was his bedchamber too and he had just as much right to it as her. And he always gets inside it slowly, like he has to get used to it every time he comes inside.

Like every night, he has his armor still on and his helmet in hands, waiting to undress behind the partition they have for this purpose. She thinks it suits him, the knight look, even if he doesn't seem all that comfortable wearing it.

Most nights, he would come inside and get immediately rid of the metal breastplate, wash his face and body still behind the partition and then ask her permission to lay beside her on the featherbed.

But that was a different night. He had promised to show her his sword and when he enters the chamber, he walks to the little table they—mostly she—used for private meals in one corner and lands the helmet on the surface staring at her before saying, “Do you still want to see the sword?”

If she wasn’t so excited, she would have snorted, that very unladylike sound that drove her mother mad. If she wanted to see it? She had thought of little else the entire day.

“I do,” she says while coming closer, her feet light with enthusiasm making her almost dance her way to him and Gendry starts to unlace his scabbard immediately.

They are close enough now and Arya watches attentively as his big hands hold the sheath, seeming uncertain of what to do next. Before she can say he should just take the sword out of the sheath, he stretches his arm, delivering her the weapon.

“Take a look,” he offers sheepishly and Arya knows her eyes are wide with surprise because… he is offering her weapon. Of course, there is no way for him to know that, unlike most ladies, she had been fencing since she was a child. But then again, if she had wanted to hurt him, she had her own sword hidden in the back of the truck she’d used to bring her things South.

Still, he is exposing himself to a risk by delivering her his sword. He doesn’t have any other weapon on him that Arya could see.

It touches her beyond words, that gesture. It startles her too.

“Are you sure?” her voice has lost all the excitement from before, now is all a careful whisper.

Gendry only nods while putting the covered sword in her hands and she accepts it.

The first thing she notes, before taking it off of its sheath is how heavy it is. It’s been several moon turns since she had in hands a sword that wasn’t her own and Needle is skinny and light, made for her petite form. But Gendry is not petite nor is his weapon.

It’s a long sword too, not as tall as her father’s had been, but too long for her to hold properly. She’s cautious while taking it out of the leather around it and stares at a blade that had been obviously done with much care.

She had learned to fence young after much insistence to her father and since then had her own weapon, but no one had been very enthusiastic in teaching more about weapons than this—she had asked, even for Mikken, Winterfell’s blacksmith. She was pretty sure her family feared if she learned more about the subject, she would try to forge her own daggers and swords, and, for their credit, they weren’t all that wrong—and so she didn’t understand so much of it.

But even for her untrained eyes it was clear that Gendry’s work was one of carefulness and maintenance.

The handle has a complicated sculpture, a form of an animal—a bull—designed around beautifully carved flourishes, all in metal.

Arya is in awe by what she sees and she hears her own impressed  _ Ooh _ s, incapable of saying more while appreciating Gendry’s labor.

Gendry, by her side, drinks on Arya’s reactions, like it was the first time his secret work was revealed to a person other than him and he desperately needed to know if they enjoyed it. She wanders if that was the case when she stares at his big apprehensive blue eyes.

“Gendry, this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life,” she announces with no hesitation. She is not exaggerating; she doesn’t even have to think much on the subject.

He opens his mouth to say something then closes it and opens it again, but nothing comes out of it. It’s such an adorable gesture that Arya feels her amazed grin turn into a fond one. “It really is,” she continues softly, not sure of what 's happening in his head.

“How much time did it take?” she asks, her eyes back at marveling the weapon.

Gendry stutters a little before answering, “From paper until having it ready, about 15 days.”

She understands enough of the subject to ask him one more question, “Were you working on many other things?”

He shakes his head, watching the sword just as her. “It was my only metal work at the time, but I had other duties and—” Gendry hesitates, his hand suddenly scratching the back of his neck, in what Arya is beginning to suspect is a nervous habit. He sighs before continuing timidly, “I—I wanted to make it perfect because—it was the first time I made one for myself.”

Arya feels her heart clenching at his words and his sincerity.

She knows that, with nothing else in hand, a blacksmith wouldn’t take more than four days with a common weapon and even if this one is clearly a more elaborated one, Gendry had put even more time in it.

It touches her in a way she cannot explain.

She’s looking deeply into his dark blue eyes when she says one more time, “It’s really beautiful.”

And he stares back, just as deeply when he responds, “Thank you.”

And for a moment, they say nothing more, just sharing a long glance and the knowledge of how much the object meant for him.

And then it all gets too much, just too much to keep their eyes locked, and Gendry looks away.

Arya still stares at his profile, though, her stomach contorting in an unprecedented way, deciding in the last minute that she too should share something with him.

She lands his sword on the table in front of them, even more careful now that she knows what it means to him, and walks towards a large wardrobe near the door.

She opens it without saying a word and Gendry watches her from across the room, curious to see what she’ll do next. She pushes the garments aside, not as delicately as she should—Beth would not like it  _ at all _ —and finds the truck she brought from Winterfell. Without lingering much on the subject, she opens it and takes a large piece of velvet that embraces the most precious thing she possesses.

Arya crosses the room quickly and puts the velvet by Gendry’s sword side.

“What’s this?” he finally asks curiously and she smiles, caressing the fabric like it is the object dear to her, not what it’s surrounded by.

“A gift I got long before coming South,” she explains, each hand finding an edge of the black velvet and then opening it for Gendry to see. There lies the skinny blade she had named Needle.

She hears him exclaim in surprise, but her eyes are still on the sword. Arya hasn’t seen it for a long time now, concealing it from the world in fear to have that last piece of home taken from her. Looking at now, she feels like she’s ready to go to Winterfell’s courtyard, to challenge Bran for one more long round of fencing that would have her exhausted and yet so happy.

It feels like she’s seeing all their faces, all the people she misses so desperately.

“Arya?” she hears Gendry calling her and when she looks at him, he seems worried. “Are you well?”

It’s only then she notices the tears rolling down her face and she tries to smile and assure him that  _ Yes _ , she’s well, she just had to face some memories that she did not expect.

But nothing of this comes. Instead, she says, “When I was younger, I wished more than anything to have my own sword and to learn to fight. My father resisted the idea for a long time, but my brother Jon secretly had this made for me in our forges and, after that, he gave up on trying stopping me”

She could almost see it, the worried and yet fond face of her father when he told her she would get a special teacher at first, since she had not learned with boys. She didn’t understand then why was he so worried about it, about her.

Since then, she had heard many times about his dead sister Lyanna and how they were so alike—not only in appearances.

“Perfect for a little Arya,” Gendry says gently, looking away from her face to watch the blade.

“Yeah,” she manages to smile. “It really was.”

“Too short now?” he enquires knowingly and she nods.

Once more, they spend a moment in appreciative silence, eyeing Needle, each one with their own thoughts.

“Thank you,” Gendry breaks the silence first and Arya observes him intently, appreciating the details of his face, the outline of his jaw, and his eyes, those amazing eyes of a tone of blue, so deep she feels like she’ll never truly uncover him.

And she really wants to uncover him completely.

“For what?” she finally asks after an embarrassing amount of time.

“For showing me this,” he grins and she notices one more detail, the way his eyes crinkle when he does that. She feels her stomach contort again. “For sharing it with me.”

She wants to thank him too, for the exact same reason, but she knows it would be too much and it would feel like too much, so she just stares at him and keeps it all to herself.

When they finally get to the bed, there’s a different kind of intimacy between, one she thinks she never shared with anyone before.

She doesn’t have nightmares.

* * *

She doesn’t regret showing Needle to Gendry.

It had felt so right at that moment; she couldn’t just accept him baring an important element of his life for her like that and not do the same for him.

But at the same time, she can’t help but fear he’ll let a superior know she’s in possession of a weapon, a sword she had been using for very long in her life, and that she could use against any of them. 

Of course, Arya would never do that.

She could never defeat a castle full of guards, not without planning for many moon turns.

She had thought about it over and over again.

Before her wedding, a month after Ned’s death, she started to plan a way to run away. After all, she’s still Arya Stark, it doesn’t matter how fearful she felt, and she could not stand still and do nothing while being held in the Red Keep. She had to occupy her mind at least with plans that felt more like a fantasy of escaping.

She had explored a lot of that place before her father died and she was forced to go everywhere with a maid—her father never felt the necessity before, even if she was in an appropriate it to do so—and it was like this that she found a chamber full of dragon skulls that ended up leading to the streets of King’s Landing.

She had yet to find the passage again, but at least she knew for a fact that there was a way to leave the Keep without being by the main gates.

Even now, after being wed, she never stopped looking for a secret passage as discreetly as she could.

She had no idea what she would do after finding one, but she searched in any case.

Some nights, while she had woken because of a bad dream, she imagined what she could do if she found that hidden place one more time. She’d have to cause a distraction, a fair excuse to not be with her maid. And have a fair amount of luck to cross paths with the lowest number of guards possible and not be stopped by any.

At the end, she always scoffed, thinking how childish it sounded, even in her own thoughts.

And she could feel Gendry’s calm breath, much like every night. But it made her bothered when her mind went to those places, like she shouldn’t have such thoughts near him because he would somehow listen and...

Yes, he would let someone know she was planning to run away, that’s part of why they forced their marriage.

But she couldn’t help that feeling that she would be betraying him if she simply left.

She knew it was absurd, he was part of King Joffrey’s guard and an important part, for all that matters. And yet, she felt they shared something silent, something she did not wish to break.

Arya had been thinking about that strange feeling before falling asleep that night and maybe it was why her nightmare had her specially shaken.

It started with her rapid steps inside the halls of the Red Keep, exploring the place just like she did before, and after descending a number of stairs, she was back at the dark chamber. For a moment, she felt happiness for finding the place once again, just like she had been fantasizing about for weeks.

But soon, that happiness turned into a mysterious dread, like her senses knew something about the room that her mind was still ignorant of.

The feeling did not stop her from going deeper inside the chamber, searching her way out of there. Just when she saw the daylight, her eyes diverted from her path in the direction where she knew the dragon skulls were.

Only there was no dragon part exposed.

In their place, a series of human heads were lined and she recognized each of them, the set of five redheads and one brown she had known all her life.

There it was, her family, her mother and siblings, staring morbidly at her, their empty eyes making her blood run cold in her veins.

When she managed to stop looking at their heads, she looked around and found herself in front of the Iron Throne, King Joffrey standing before it holding Ned Stark’s decapitated head proudly, blood still dripping from it.

“Arya,” she hears the voice calling her out of nowhere, but she can’t find it, she can’t respond to it, because all she can do is scream. “Arya, wake up”

It’s Gendry’s voice, calling her from the distance but all Arya can see is Ned and Catelyn and Robb and Jon and Sansa and Bran and Rickon, all over and over, their lifeless eyes hurting her. She’s screaming again, or maybe she never stopped.

She just knows Gendry is right in front of her now, begging for her to open her eyes, and she really wants to, she wants to be rid of that horrid image impregnated in her brain, but she just doesn't know how.

“Arya, please, look at me,” he’s saying with a tranquilizing tone and maybe is working because she hears more of him and less of her now. “Please, look at me”

Finally, she does, opening her eyes to find his face nearest of hers than it had ever been, his gaze filled with worry.

“Arya, you’re okay,” he’s still trying to make her calm down. “You’re safe”

“No, I am not,” she barely manages to say before she starts to sob. She doesn’t know what it is to be safe anymore, and even if it was true, her family had never been in more danger.

She has her head hidden on her knees now, weeping more than she had done in front of anyone since her father died. She had kept her tears to the privacy of her bedchamber at night.

Right now, she doesn’t care. She just cares about how she will never see her family whole again. Her father is dead, her brother is fighting a war against the people who murdered him and she thinks she’ll never see any of them again.

She cries for what feels like hours.

When she raises her head again, she’s surprised to find Gendry watching her. He offers her a handkerchief before she can say a word and she accepts it with gratitude, trying to recompose herself.

“Thank you,” she says and she means more than the piece of fabric he just gave her.

Gendry doesn’t say a thing, just goes to his side of their featherbed and sits, still watching her. She’s so relieved he’s there with her.

“Are you feeling better?”

Is she? Crying helped her to get rid of the immediate terror of her dream, but now she’s filled with the ache of missing her family. 

She doesn’t think she can say anything at this moment, so she just lies down, going back to the same position she sleeps in every night, her back to Gendry’s. Except this time, she hates it more than anything. She feels so lonely like this that she doesn’t even think before reaching for his arm.

Arya holds Gendry’s wrist with delicacy, wanting to let him know he can make her let go whenever he wants, but he does nothing.

“Thank you,” she repeats softly, because there’s nothing more she can say, but she still needs to say it.

Her stomach flutters when she feels Gendry’s hand reaching for hers, enlacing them. “Yeah,” it’s all he says, and it feels like all the words ever created in one.

She feels the warmth coming from his hand, so much bigger than hers, full of calluses and marks of his previous work and it feels more real than ever.

In that moment, she knows that she was far too gone to consider letting him behind.


	2. and perfectly we fill the gaps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just want to leave a enormous thank you here. the response to this has been amazing and it made me so happy i can barely put it into words. i have been keeping my writing for myself for so long now that i was crazy overwhelmed to discover that people... enjoy what comes from my mind? who would have thought??

Arya has been by her window for a long time already when Beth asks to come in. It feels magical, just to stare at it, the eerie red glow in the sky.

“What do you think it is?” she asks without moving from her place.

“Dragons, m’lady,” Beth’s answer carries no hesitation, something like bliss all over her voice. “It’s the sign of dragons.”

Arya doesn’t look away from the light.  _ Dragons. _ Wouldn’t it be nice? She could do with one, to help her away from that place.

“What does m’lady wish to wear for the tournament?” she hears Beth questioning from a corner of the chamber, probably in front of her wardrobe.  _ Nothing _ , she wishes she could answer because, really, she’d prefer to stick a fork in each eye rather than celebrate King Joffrey’s Name Day.

But as a  _ Lady of the court _ , she has no such option, so she says, “The dark gray one.”

Arya always regrets how Beth doesn’t know any Northern hair style. She would enjoy very much to parade every possible sign of the North on this day specially, but she had never been good with her own hair and Beth’s from King’s Landing herself.

So Arya has a couple of loose braids from each side of her updo and the darker dress she owns—she would wear black if she had one that color—when she’s ready to go.

Beth starts telling her about a kitchen boy named Tom that has been flirting with her and Arya listens, in absolute no hurry to leave her chambers. The girl is halfway on a speech about why she doesn’t trust any of the kitchen servants when they hear someone knocking on the door and Gendry comes in.

“Good day, m’lady,” he’s all timidity and she smiles curiously. Firstly because she rarely ever sees him at mornings, he always leaves the bedchambers before she’s awakened and only back at night, every day without fail. She always had to stop herself from asking if he had any days off and where he went in those days.

Secondly because of his garments. She has never seen him wear anything besides his guard armor and his nightshirt—which she tries very hard not to stare at—but now he’s not dressed for work. Instead, he had breeches and a leather vest, much like every other man she’s seen in court, but... well, she’d never seen anyone fit so well in such clothes, his broad shoulder more prominent than ever and Arya discovers that this is just as hard to not stare as the nightclothes.

She feels very hot all of the sudden.

“Good day, Gendry,” she responds and waits for what he’ll say next. He clearly doesn’t know where to start, so she does it for him, “Don’t you have to work today?”

He seems a bit relieved to have something to answer to, “No, Ser Arys thought I might want to compete in the tournament”

“And will you?” Arya thinks how weird it is that she’s only asking it now. As a wife, she had expected she’d known at least a bit of her husband’s steps and competing in a joust seemed like one of those bits.

“No,” he scoffs and she’s grinning again. “I hate that kind of stuff”

_ That checks _ , she thinks to herself because it really does. Gendry doesn’t want attention drawn to him, she had noticed. He wouldn’t do such a thing if he had any option.

“I just thought that—” he starts and stumbles upon his words, like he often does when speaking with her. “Well, since you have to go—I thought I could make you company”

Arya can suddenly feel her blood running faster inside her. She had never really spent time with him and the idea makes her nervous in a way she didn’t expect. She wants to, very much, even if her stomach is turning just by the idea of sharing her entire day with him.

That is certainly new.

“I would love to,” she’s shy too now, but he smiles a little at her answer and warmth spreads through her.

She releases Beth from her duties until supper and soon Arya and Gendry are walking the halls of Maegor’s Holdfast with her arm laced to his, like any wife would do to their husband. She notices how small she seems by his side, even if she’s not that short anymore.

“Have you seen the Comet?'' It's the first thing that comes to her mind to fill the silence, but now that she said it, she wants to know what he thinks.

“Oh, yeah, you can’t miss it”

“What do you think it means?”

They are almost out in daylight when he finally says something. “The men said it meant good things for the King, because of his Name Day” Arya hates that. She’d rather stick with the dragons.

He doesn’t continue, but his tone suggests he had more in mind, so she says, “But…?”

“But… does it have to mean something?” he shrugs and continues his steps and Arya thinks that it doesn’t  _ have _ to mean something, but it probably does.

And she ponders on the new information she just got about him, one she had never known, but it doesn’t actually surprise her: he’s skeptical. 

They are sitting now, not too close to Joffrey’s central place, but not far enough in Arya’s opinion. She observes that Myrcella and Tommen are by each side of their brother and there’s no signal of Queen Cersei.

Gendry seems to notice where she’s looking.

“The Queen is reunited with the Council, she’s not coming”

“Lucky her,” Arya mutters without thinking, but loud enough only for Gendry to hear and before she can overthink her words he snorts and tries not to smile. She wants to smile at his reaction, but starts to talk again to prevent her from doing so, “How do you know this, anyway? Aren’t these things supposed to be more secretive?”

“Yes,” he gets closer to her to whisper. “But Ser Arys Oakheart really enjoys a gossip”

This time she can’t stop her smile.

The tournament is little compared to the last one. It’s held inside the Keep’s walls since the people of King’s Landing seemed more enraged than ever, or so she heard. She has some satisfaction at the thought that the last time they were celebrating her father.

She can’t help but think of Sansa with all this. Her sister had thought the previous event a magical moment, full of what she imagined when coming South. She wishes Sansa was here to watch this one too, even if it wouldn’t be as magical to her. She wishes she knew what happened to her too. She had been missing since the day their father was executed and she has no idea where she went.

They barely mention her. Usually it’s only to indicate she was betrothed to Joffrey and it’s made in a way she thinks they’ll replace her. Maybe they think her dead or maybe it’s just that an alliance with house Stark has not the same value anymore. Either way, Arya hopes they do release her from that betrothed, even if she can’t think of anyone that deserved to be forced to marry Joffrey.

She supposes she’s grateful, after all. She had been much luckier than she could imagine with her husband.

Gendry’s trying to pretend he’s paying attention at the joust when they start. He doesn’t have much more to do there, much like her, so he stares at the men competing half-heartedly, and Arya is amazed by the fact she can read him.

He’s not one to talk much and even if she’s dying to do so, she usually doesn’t ask him much too. She wants it to be his choice to share things with her.

But still, she keeps trying to understand him just by his expressions, which isn’t easy, since most of the time he’s stony-faced—or turned the other way from her, in their featherbed.

She thinks she noticed a change in him, though. He’s more serious in the last days, since the news of Renly Baratheon’s self-coronation had spread. He had been his ward and brought to the palace by him, so it makes sense to her.

She wanted to ask him about that too, but she hadn’t said a thing.

Instead, because she clearly couldn’t care less about the joust, she turns to him and asks something else, “Do you like it here, Gendry?”

He looks at her immediately, “Here?”

“King’s Landing… The Red Keep…”

He doesn’t answer right away, his eyes leaving hers thoughtfully. She often thinks if he’s reflecting on a response or how much to tell her. Probably both.

“I was born in King’s Landing,” he starts to say, turning to her completely now. “I was a blacksmith  _ here _ for most part of my life before Renly took me to Storm’s End. I didn’t mind the city”

She can’t say a thing, surprised as she is by his information. How had he ended up as ward of Renly Baratheon in Storm’s End if he was from King’s Landing? But one more time, she asks something else, “Do you now?”

“Not King’s Landing, no...” she waits for more and he comes back to her original question, “But, no, I don’t like the Keep”

Arya has her next question ready, “Have you thought about leaving?”

It’s an unwise inquiry; she knew it before making it. It could lead him to think she was planning an escape and even if she always were, it was not a concrete enough plan to be worth a treason accusation. Of course she’d prefer to never be caught, but if she were, she’d choose to be over something more than an impulsive question.

But Gendry doesn’t react in any way that indicates he’s mind went to a place like that. She thinks he understood her meaning.

“I couldn’t, for more than one reason. Not now, anyway,” he looks at her with an intensity that has her shuddering when he continues. “And there was something that stopped me before too”

She doesn’t know why, but the answer makes her uneasy. She has no idea what it could be.

Before she has the opportunity to ask further, something happens around them. The people watching seem suddenly restless and Arya soon understands why when the gates are opened. Joffrey is shouting that no one is asked his permission to do so when they see the Lannisters banners and Tyrion Lannister enters the place.  _ Oh not one more _ .

She can hear the man discussing with his nephew and as much as she enjoys watching Joffrey being called out like a little child, she just wants them to finish whatever is happening so the damned tournament can end.

“Do you want to leave?” Gendry offers and she fears she was too transparent at her annoyance. Or that he can read her mind.

“Do you think we can?” she doesn’t even try to hide her hope now.

“We can try,” he stands and she follows him. They are not the only one moving now and she considers that a good sign. If for some reason, she was enquired on the reason she left, she could always fake a headache.

“Careful with that thong, little man,” she can finally understand Joffrey well and she realizes he had finished the jousts earlier anyway. Well, that was a relief, they would not get into any problems for not celebrating the King’s Name Day.

Gendry and she are almost at the exit—that unhappily was near the dome where Joffrey was—when they’re approached.

“Lady Arya,” Tyrion nods in her direction and then turns to Gendry. “Ser… Gendry, isn’t that it?”

“That’s right, my lord,” he nods to the man and she can’t help but notice he’s tense and more formal now.

Tyrion turns back to her, but not without lingering on their linked arms.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your loss, my lady, the gods are cruel” he says diplomatically and she thinks she could punch him. How dare he talk of it like it had not been the work of his sister and nephew? Like it was the gods fault, not the Lannister’s? How dare he even mention her father to her like that?

She holds Gendry’s forearm hard and she’s sure he notices but she doesn’t care because if she doesn’t do that, she will attack Tyrion Lannister right there, in front of the whole court.

“Yes,” it’s all she manages to say between gritted teeth.

She doesn’t stay to hear more, she doesn’t need to. There’s nothing he’ll say at this moment that won’t make her angrier, so she uses all her force to pull Gendry’s broad form away from that place. She just wants to get to their chambers and punch a pillow or two.

* * *

Arya knows better than this, but still, she kicks a chair as soon as they are inside their bedchambers.

“That little son of a bitch,” she grunts loudly and, yes, she knows she’s being childish, but how could she not be when she had to live in that place, with the same people that turned her life miserable. And they still had the energy to pretend they weren’t to blame for any of it. “These fucking—,” she has reached the bed, but instead of punching the pillow, she throws it to the other side of the room.

“—I’ll fucking feed them to the Others,” she keeps going, making all the unladylike sounds her Septa condemned when she was younger, grunting and shrieking and cursing until she feels the burning rage inside her gradually decrease.

Gendry is sitting quietly on their bed, watching her, and she sighs deeply. She had forgotten his presence for a moment, as if her anger and she were the only things in the world. But now that she sees him, she blushes, ashamed by her heated fit.

“I—,” Arya then realizes that she should be more than ashamed. She should be scared. She had been so clear about her hatred when she knew she shouldn’t talk of it. For the first time, she’s the one that can’t meet his eyes. “I—forgive me, I was just—”

“You don’t need to apologize, Arya,” Gendry interrupts her nervous muttering. “You behaved so much better than I would.”

She’s caught out of guard by his words, like she often is when she thinks he’ll be loyal to her enemies. She’s still so scared she’ll say something wrong in front of him and so far he has done nothing that leads her to think he was spying for them.

She exhales again because,  _ gods _ , how tired she feels, exhausted of the constant game she seems to be playing, betting her own life.

He’s still watching her when she looks at him again. She doesn’t know well how to feel about that.

“Are you well?” he asks her softly and if she were to be honest with him, she’d say  _ No _ , she’s not well, not only because of where she is and what is happening in her life, but because her instinct is fighting with her conscience constantly, debating if she should trust him or not.

“I’m not as irritated anymore, if that’s what you’re asking,” Arya responds and it’s true. She’s emotionally drained now, not quite knowing what to do with how overwhelmed she feels.

So she sits in the chair that she hadn’t kicked and starts disposing of her boots.

Gendry is tapping his foot on the ground now; she can hear it while unlacing her shoes. Had she made him uneasy with her rage? They were having a good and sincere time before and she wishes she could go back to that now.

The space between them is filled with an awkward and tense energy and she doesn’t know well what to do to get rid of it.

“Do you want to eat? I can call for food,” Gendry proposes suddenly.

“Will you still eat too?”

He stares at her, obviously surprised by her question. They never had shared a meal. She doesn’t really know if it’s because he prefers it like that or if he’s just giving her space.

“If that’s what you want”

“I do,” maybe she doesn’t have the patience for tiptoeing right now. “Do you?”

He smiles just a little before saying, “I do”

They spend the rest of the day together and Arya feels more carefree than she had in a very long time.

They are sharing the same table they showed each other their weapons, their food already eaten. Arya had been the first to talk, as she usually was, telling him bits about her childhood and moments of her life before arriving in King’s Landing. It starts just as awkward as before, but soon she finds her way to an easier chat, lighter than earlier.

She had told him about the time Bran and she had a fight that carried on for a month and she didn’t ever remember what it was about, she told him about taking Rickon to the warm pools of water in the Weirwoods and she told him about the first time she defeated Jon with her sword.

It feels so nostalgic and distant, like it was all in another lifetime. She thinks she may look sad, because Gendry starts to talk of himself too, perhaps to distract her from her own memories.

He finally tells her about what he does when he has a day off—which isn’t frequently, she learns, “I go around the city, actually,” he shrugs. “Visit the shop I used to work in or my friend’s bakery”

“Do you miss it? Your life before”

“I miss the forge,” it’s all he says for starters. “Smiting is hard work, but it felt good. It felt like I was really doing something useful and it didn’t feel wrong”

_ Did working at the palace feel wrong for him? _ She decides to keep this one for the future.

“Where do you keep your stuff?” she asks instead.

At first, he’s confused by the sudden change of subject. Then he’s blushing and his voice is barely listenable when he continues. “I keep them in a cabinet out there”

His shyness always makes Arya’s insides melt and this time is not different. She smiles at the way he can’t quite look at her, like she had caught him doing something he shouldn’t.

“You should bring them here,” she says firmly, still smiling. “It is your chambers too, you should use it as such, Gendry”

He searches for her eyes, uncertain, and she nods, trying to confirm she really means it. She can’t look away from him now, one more time noticing things she hadn’t before, like the way his eyelashes are impossibly dim and long and how it contrasts impressively with the dark shade of blue of his eyes.

“M’lady,” Beth calls from the door and she’s startled by the sound, realizing she had been staring for too long into Gendry’s eyes.

“Come in, Beth,” she hushes to say and she thinks Gendry is blushing again.

“M’lady, do you wish to bathe before supper or—oh,” Beth interrupts herself when she notices Arya isn’t alone, like she’s used to. “Good night, Ser”

“No—no Ser, Beth,” Gendry’s standing now, and stumbling his way out of the table. “Just Gendry is enough”

Arya could laugh at his timidity if she had a way to guarantee he wouldn’t feel offended by it.

“Oh no, Ser, I could never do that, Ser,” Beth replies dead serious.

“I couldn’t convince her to drop the title either, Gendry, I tried,” Arya smiles, standing too, now. She turns to Beth, “A bath sounds fine, thank you”

The girl curtsies briefly then leaves them both alone in the bedchamber again.

“So,” Gendry breaks the silence between them first, staring at the floor, “I shall leave you to your bath”

“Of course,” it’s all she says, because of course he would. She doesn’t quite know why it doesn’t feel as necessary as she did in the night of their marriage.

“I suppose I’ll come back soon,” he doesn’t move and she nods.

“Gendry,” she calls and when he looks at her, she has no idea why she called his name in the first place. Was it to say he could stay in their bedchambers? She wouldn’t dare to do that, she had no idea where that thought had even come from. So she said something completely different, unexpected even to her, “I’m sorry about Renly. I know it puts you in a difficult position here”

He doesn’t respond to her immediately and she doesn’t expect him to.

“He had already put me in a difficult position way before this,” it’s his answer and she thinks there’s some bitterness in there.

“Do you care about him?'' It's such a direct question that her mother would have reprimanded her for being rude, but really, if she couldn’t be direct once in a lifetime with her husband, what was even the point of getting married?

Gendry shrugs, turning to the door to leave the chamber when he says, “I used to feel grateful for him taking me in, but no, I don’t really care about him.”

Arya stares at the door for a long time after he’s gone, thinking that maybe her conscience has already lost the fight against her instincts, because she thinks she already trusts him.

* * *

Much like every morning, Arya is sitting by the table in the chambers breaking her fast in light talk with Beth, complaining with her about having woken with pains.

“Is it your moonblood, m’lady?” Beth asks with solicitude and Arya shrugs, uncertain.

“It’s possible, but I never had pains like these”

“Oh ma says you get these when you’re worried,” Arya supposes it makes sense, never had she had such worries in her life as the ones she’s had in the last few weeks. “She says there’s tea good for it, with lavender, she knows because her mistress had a lot of pains when she still had her moonblood”

Arya knows Beth’s mother had been a chambermaid too and that her little sister it’s been trained to be one as well, even if she’s only seven. “It’s easy and good way to get coin if you get the right mistress,” it’s what Beth tells Arya when she finds out about the family tradition. “Ma’s ma was one too and I guess her ma too”

Arya turns to her plate, thinking that maybe she should ask for the tea or her stitches would end up even more terrible that morning, when she was to encounter Princess Myrcella. She likes the girl, just as she likes Prince Tommen. Arya doesn’t see much of them and she doesn’t know if it’s on purpose, but she’s happy to meet the siblings every other day.

Myrcella is younger than Arya, but only for one name day and there is talk of marriage for the girl around court. She doesn’t seem to mind, ever the Princess that she is, and Arya thinks she’d be at least anxious in her place. Yes, she would have married for her parents interests, she thinks, but she wouldn’t deal with everything as gracefully as Myrcella. Arya has to admit she admires the girl for it.

Arya isn’t exactly invited for her stitch lessons, usually they meet for tea. But somehow, it always ends up with stitches for the Princess and everyone that follows her. Arya thinks that maybe it’s Myrcella’s way of spending energy, like hers was sparring at home.

It’s not often that she has an invitation for tea with the Princess, but she’s delighted to attend when she does, even with all the stitching. She thinks her rare presence is due to Queen Cersei’s meddling, not wanting her children getting closer to her.

She didn’t even know wedded women were allowed to frequent Myrcella’s tea until she was summoned this time. Maybe the girl sympathized with her just as much as Arya liked her.

She’s still wearing her nightgown, like she usually does when she breaks fast inside the chambers, and thinks it’s time to dress and if she’ll ask Beth to fetch the lavender tea, when the door is opened out of a sudden.

Gendry doesn’t stop to close it, just as he didn’t stop to knock. He’s wearing his armor this time, apparently interrupting his working period. He still doesn’t visit their bedchambers at mornings and Arya just knows something has happened by the way he enters in haste.

“Is everything alright?” she asks immediately, worried, and he doesn’t look at her yet.

Instead, he turns to her maid, “Beth, could you excuse us a moment? I need to speak with Arya alone”

The girl had stood up the moment he entered the room and she nods in agreement at Gendry’s request. “I’ll ask a Maester for that tea for your pain, lady,” she announces to Arya and leaves, closing the door behind her.

“Pain? Are you unwell?” Gendry’s worried, diverted of his original purpose coming into the chambers.

“Oh, it’s only my moonblood,” Arya dismisses with her hand, as if his concern was floating between them. She thinks he’s as tone redder than normal when she continues, “Now, tell me at once, what is it?”

She hadn’t even had time to stand up, distracted as she was by him, and before she could, Gendry was on his knees in front of her, hands at each arm of the chair. She’s in complete surprise by his unprompted and uncommon proximity, but she doesn’t mind.

“Arya, you need to stay in our chambers today,” his eyes are wide, filled with urgency, and she’s worried now.

“What happened, Gendry?” he’s so close she can imagine herself touching him, not only to make him speak at once—that too—but because she really wants to.

“It’s your brother”

She’s startled by his words, “My brother?”

“Yes, your brother Robb, he—,” Gendry doesn’t continue and this time Arya doesn’t even think before holding his uncovered wrists firmly.

“What of him, Gendry?” she doesn’t want to presume the worse, she doesn’t even want to ponder on the possibility, but her voice is so obviously shaken she knows her body feared it even before her mind could form the thought.

“He’s alive, Arya,” he reads her emotion correctly. “He’s alive and he has won a battle last night against the Lannisters”

Arya has to process each of the things Gendry just said at a time.

Robb is not dead. He has been in war for some time now and she fears the worst. She dreads that one day she’ll have some news and they will be of his death, of that one battle that will end everything for him.

But that is not it.

He’s alive and he had another victory. He’s undefeated so far and she doesn’t want to, but she feels when one more branch of hope starts to grow inside of her.

Perhaps it’s not all lost after all. Perhaps he will manage to rescue them from that place and she’ll live to see the remains of her family reunited again.

Maybe he’ll destroy all those who tried to end them and have their heads exposed in stakes at the walls of the Keep, just as Joffrey did with her father’s. Maybe Robb will let her do it herself, like she daydreams of it sometimes.

She doesn’t voice any of these thoughts.

“Joffrey is furious and I can’t guarantee he won’t try to take it on you,” Gendry continues, explaining exactly why he asked her to stay inside. He’s holding her hands now, as if to make her pay attention to him.

“That pest,” she mutters in return, but she doesn’t really care. The satisfaction of knowing her brother had won another battle could keep her in the bedchambers for weeks to come if it was the case.

Gendry chuckles, “Exactly, he’s a pest and he would do something like that”

Arya is distracted of the simple euphoria of her house’s victory by his words. She had never heard him say something that indicated opposition to any of the royal family.

_ He sounds so sincere _ , she thinks.  _ Gods, please let him mean it. _

She knows that wish comes from deep inside her, from that place of desperation that just wants to count on him.

“I need to go to my station now,” Gendry announces and starts to stand and when his hands leave hers, she can feel every part of it, every nerve in emptiness for missing his touch. She wants him to keep contact with her desperately.

She doesn’t say anything, diverted by how overwhelmed she feels by the lack of his stroke. She thinks never someone ever brought her so many emotions with the most simple of actions and she fears what it means.

He’s by the door now, ready to leave, and Arya is still in the same place she was when he came in.

“Arya,” he calls and her heart leaps. One more reaction he ignites on her to add to the growing list. “You can be happy about this,” she doesn’t say anything, feeling her eyes getting wide, and he tries to reassure her with a soft smile. “I know I am”

And when he leaves, Arya has a feeling she has already seen that scene, because one more time she’s left behind with melt insides and the forever wishes that he would stay more.

* * *

Arya is actually happy to be confined in the first days. She doesn’t mind having to skip any  _ commitments _ , glad to give a break to all the court system. Whenever she’s enquired about her absence, the only response is that she’s having pains and that seems enough for now.

It seems enough for Beth too. She just gets more lavender tea for her lady, (“It was pretty easy,” she tells Arya when she returns to her bedchambers after Gendry’s visit, carrying a great quantity of lavender for Arya’s surprise, “Maester Frenken—That’s the Imp—Lord Tyrion’s Maester, he’s much more agreeable than Maester Pycelle—he said you can have  _ any tea _ you want, just ask.” The insinuation doesn’t go unnoticed and Arya has no idea what to feel about it.)

But soon, Arya is pacing around the room, ready to leave, but not sure if she should yet. When she decides to ask Gendry that night, another thing happens that changes everything: Myrcella’s engagement with the heir of Dorne.

“She wants to see you properly before she leaves,” Gendry tells her, saying that he was charged to deliver the message. Arya can’t help but raise an eyebrow, not because of the note itself, but the fact that  _ Gendry _ is the one who should give it to her. It should be a maid’s affair and she’s unsure of what to make of that, “There will be a procession to take the Princess to the shores and set her to Dorne”

Arya is sad to see Myrcella go in such a hurried way, not much time to spend at goodbyes. But they are in the middle of a war and there’s not something as luxurious as time to spend in war.

When they meet—not for tea, for supper in Arya’s private chambers since she’s visiting everyone at court before parting and Arya is thankful, not because she’s still hesitant to leave the room, but for fear of a call to Myrcella of all people turn into a trap of some kind—the Princess doesn’t dread her fate. The worst for her, she says, is leaving Tommen, who was much sadder about the news than her. However, even have never seen much of Westeros besides King’s Landing and that one visit to Winterfell, she’s anxious to leave. Arya can’t blame her.

They have never been close, but Arya wishes they could, even if she thinks they don’t have much in common.

The day comes for the Princess to leave and they all go to the shores, to see the big fleet that will escort her away.

Arya can’t help but think about what will come next. She has heard that Stannis Baratheon is preparing to attack the city, having crowned himself just as Renly did. Gendry confirmed the fact, saying that they are expecting him on Black Water Bay, the same place from where Myrcella is departing.

She’s as far as she can from the royal family, comfortably standing near Lady Tanda and Lolly, her daughter. They aren’t of much interest to her, but they are humbler than most in that place and she can mix between them easily, not wanting any kind of attention.

However, she doesn’t seem to have to worry much this time. Cersei is observing the ships with attention and Tommen is crying by her side. Joffrey is by his brother’s side, talking mumbling things no one truly cares to listen, as he usually does, bothering his sibling, and Arya has to refrain herself from grimacing at him. She wishes she could take Tommen away from his family, he’s such a little and sweet kid, with his gentle words and fondness for kittens—she has a soft spot for both little children and cats, so she likes him very much. He reminds her of Bran and Rickon.

It takes a while for them to move away from there, but Arya doesn’t mind. She’s lost at words, looking all-around of her, barely believing she left the Red Keep. It’s true she won’t get much time out of it and it’s still King’s Landing. She won’t complain, though, not for now.

When the Queen finally deflects from the ships, they start to move. Arya has a horse and she’s happy to ride again, because she can’t do much inside the Keep. She hasn’t bothered to gallop in the courtyard, where she’s allowed to.

She’s further in the line, not someone of enough importance to ride near the King, a true blessing if you would ask her. There are some courtiers behind her, as well as a large set of guards that doesn’t include her husband, who is closer to Prince Tommen. She sees when he searches for her, acknowledging her position in line before they can leave and she beams softly, but he doesn’t return. He seems concerned.

When their cortege begins, she immediately understands why.

There are too many people surrounding them, the news of their passage spreading around the city rapidly. It’s not everyday that the whole court leaves the palace and the citizens of King’s Landing have been trying to reach the King for weeks now, furiously standing by the gates to protest their starvation.

Arya can see it now, in every face of the people around her and she’s scared of their rage, but she’s also silently supporting them. Not only because they were against her enemies, because they were right. They should be taking care of the people, not taking everything for them.

For almost half the way, they go in tense calm, but she can feel in her skin that only a miracle of the gods would allow them to reach the Red Keep without any incidents. She wishes she had a blade on her, any weapon that would help her in case everything went wrong.

And then she sees it, coming from the wall of flesh that surrounds them, a hand throwing something at Joffrey. Throwing shit at Joffrey.

She knows in other circumstances, she would have laughed, not mature enough to control the instinct. But right now, she’s caught in the middle of the storm and she knows Joffrey won’t let this go.

“Who threw this?” he screams furiously, trying to get rid of the shit tarnishing his blonde hair, “I want the man who did this!”

There is shouting now, of many things. Arya hears  _ “Bastard!” _ and  _ “Monster!” _ at Joffrey’s direction and  _ “Bitch!” _ and  _ “Brotherfucker!” _ and  _ “King’s Slayer’s Slut” _ at Cersei, but it’s just the beginning. There are people clamming for Stannis and Renly and even Robb, there’s people asking for food and it all became worse when Joffrey sent the Hound to look for whoever threw that shit on him.

“Back to the Keep.  _ Now _ ,” she can’t make up the voice who ordered that, but it doesn’t matter, because she can’t move. The people are surrounding their horses and she can feel hand touching her now and she tries to kick but there are just too many.

Arya just knows she’s not in her horse anymore when she feels the pain of the shock with the ground. She’s lucky enough to be agile and she manages to stand before the crowd is standing on her. There are a thousand faces surrounding her now and she uses her force the best she can without any weapons.

“Arya,” she thinks she listens and she knows immediately where it comes from this time, his lips being the only that she hears her given name from.

“Gendry,” she screams back, putting one arm up to help him find her. It’s crazy to think that someone can save her from all those people. She tries to fight back, but her face is stroked and the air escapes her when someone hits her hard in the stomach.

It’s then that she listens to his voice, closer than ever, muffing all the noise around. Or maybe it was the lack of oxygen that had that effect, the light slowly disappearing from her sight. She just knows there are a pair of strong arms around her before she falls again and the sound of steel cutting air and flesh.

“Arya,” his whisper is only for her, she’s not sure if even Gendry is aware of it.

She feels when they move, but her eyelids are so heavy she doesn’t see where until one moment later, when he’s landing her with gentleness on the ground.

“Arya, can you hear me?” he’s all worry and care, “Please, Arya, talk to me.”

She doesn’t respond immediately, feeling slowly more lucid, “Gendry”

“Yes, Arya, it’s me. Are you badly hurt?”

“No,” she manages to say with dragged voice, “don’t think so”

“Okay, that’s good for now,” Gendry says and they don’t exchange words for a while, her mind slowly getting back on its tracks. Her eyes are still closed, but she can feel her surroundings more clearly now. She knows she is sitting on something above the floor, leaning on the wall.

She also is suddenly conscious of a heavy breath close to her face, Gendry’s breath. His hands are touching her face with tenderness and warmth, stroking her cheek.

She rests for a moment, the peace of his presence bringing her back to herself.

“Where are the others?” she asks after what she feels is a long time.

“I don’t know, I came to find you”

“Shouldn’t you go after the King?” Arya’s a bit airily, but she knows his duty should be with the royal family.

“He had the whole Kingsguard to save him,” Gendry’s strokes continue, his right hand reaching her forehead with care, “I had to help my wife”

She likes the sound of the words  _ my wife _ leaving his mouth and when she finally opens her eyes, she sees the blue of his own staring deeply into her.

They are in an empty alley, a little thing that just someone that lived their whole life in that town could find, a lost grace in the middle of that chaos. She’s sitting in a low wall, probably a half broken building, and he offers her his hand to help her stand. Arya takes it and tries to get up with hesitance, but doesn’t get anywhere beyond that, her body still limping from the turmoil.

She doesn’t get much choice and allows him to carry her, knowing she wouldn’t get far at her own feet. And Gendry’s broad and tall figure would be much more effective in diverting from the crowd.

“It’s not far,” his voice is comforting, but this time it’s not needed. She doesn’t need comfort; she knows at this moment that Gendry will do anything to protect her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i changed the cronology of some events to make this work, but don't worry, we are touching some things that would have already happened in acok.
> 
> and yes, we are going to follow along some of the major events of king's landing (and the rest of westeros, naturally), so feel free to place your bets about what is coming next :)


	3. little ghost, you see the pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy valentine's day! have some fluff, backstory and, maybe, pain?

_Little ghost, you see the pain._

It’s already dark when Arya awakes.

She doesn’t remember much besides being treated by a master as soon as she was within the castle's walls, confused and exhausted. She doesn’t even remember getting into a bed.

Right now, she only knows it’s nighttime because the light behind her eyelids is very faint. Her head is aching in a way it never did before and her right cheek pulses painfully where she thinks she has been hit.

She wants to open her eyes, but even before she knows she’ll get dizzy, her head stinging like it was. The sigh that escapes her is profound as she tries to control her body enough to understand her surroundings.

There’s no way for her to be sure, eyes closed as they were, but she thinks she’s back in her chambers, the light coming from a candle on her nightstand, where she usually leaves them. She also hears steps and breaths and she knows she isn’t alone.

“Gendry?” she mumbles, groggily, the memory of her husband helping her out of the horde coming back.

“No, m’lady,” responds a voice she immediately identifies as a worried Beth, “he hasn’t returned yet”

_ Returned? _ Arya’s head pounds harder and she whines a bit, but still, she slowly opens her eyes.

“How’re ya feeling, m’lady?” her maid gets closer to her bed.

“Not good,” she answers honestly, trying to sit. Beth embraces her shoulders quickly, supporting Arya while she gets straight and leans on the headboard. When she’s accommodated, she speaks again, “My head is hurting like the seven hells.”

“Oh yeah, Maester Pycelle said it would do that,” she nods solemnly. “And he said you might get another pains in the next few days”

Arya refrains herself from groining, knowing there’s not much to be done there. Of course she’ll be sore for the following days, she’s sure she has some bruises spread through her body. Even now, she knows that if it wasn’t the milk she was given earlier, she’d be feeling much more than the headache.

“What happened to the others?” she asks, with more curiosity than worry. If she’s feeling that bad, there’s a chance they’ll be just the same. But she was further on the line and the whole Kingsguard to protect them, so she’s not too hopeful there.

“The king and queen are safe. And the prince and the hand, too,” Beth sounds as if she wants to reassure Arya.  _ Of course they are _ , it’s the sarcastic answer she gives the girl mentally. Out loud, she only stays silent, waiting for the rest of the report. “Most of them got back safely, but they killed the High Sept and…”

She pauses, grimacing as if her next words had a bad taste. “And they attacked Lady Tanda’s daughter”

_ Attacked _ , not  _ killed _ , like the High Sept. The words were bitter on her ears, just as they had been in Beth’s mouth.

“Is she alive?” Arya’s voice is barely a whisper. Her maid’s only answer is a nod and they didn’t say anything after that.

It’s too horrible and she knows there’s nothing more to speak after that. She feels sick, the notion that, had she not been rescued by Gendry, she might have had a similar fate coming to her.

The thought of her husband brings her back to Beth’s first words, when she woke up. How had he not returned yet?

“Does m’lady wish to supper?” Beth offers and Arya begins to shake her head, but regrets the action immediately, her pain stinging with force and her illness increasing.

“Please, no,” she responds weakly, closing her eyes for an instant and taking a deep breath. “I won’t keep anything in my stomach at the moment”

“Oh, are you sick? Do you want some milk?” Arya knows she means milk of the poppy and even it makes her feel ill. But at the same time, she’s not mad at the idea, so she mutters a  _ yes _ .

Beth moves with promptitude and in little time, she’s drinking the medicine from a goblet. When she’s finished, her maid helps her to lie down again. Then, she asks, “What did you mean when you said Gendry hadn’t returned yet?”

Arya still has her eyes closed, so she can’t read Beth’s moment of silence before answering, “He had to go back to the city, m’lady. There’s been some burnings around the town and he had to help”

She opens her eyes, troubled by Beth’s words. It shouldn’t bother her, should it? It was Gendry’s work, after all, and he had been doing it before they were acquainted. But it was different, knowing he was inside the Red Keep, protecting the King from theoretical threats and outside the walls of the castle, fighting an enraged crowd.

Her uneasiness is so clear her maid hurries to comfort her, “It has ended not long ago, he must be on his way here, m’lady”

“Yes, of course,” Arya utters halfheartedly, not knowing if she’s just saying it to calm her.

It startles her, to realize how much she cares about him.

But at the same time, how could she not? Just that morning, he had saved her from the gods know what. He had been nothing but kind to her the whole time they had been stuck together.

“M’lady, relax, please,” Beth is next to her again, trying to ease Arya. She feels lightheaded now and she’s not sure if it’s the milk acting or her anxiety. She tries to get up again and is much more unsuccessful then before.

_ The milk, definitely _ , she thinks. But everything after it seems dizzy, like she can’t have straight thoughts. All she knows is she’s not strong enough to move and that Gendry has not returned yet.

And then she’s asleep again.

* * *

It’s still nighttime when she wakes again. Or at least, she hopes it’s the same night.

This time, her head doesn’t hurt just as much—still, it’s more than any casual pain. She hears voices whispering afar and what she thinks it’s a door closing. Then silence.

Is she alone? For a moment, she thinks so, until she hears steps and a sigh.

One more time, the word seems to have life of its own in her mouth, because she doesn’t even think before saying, “Gendry?”

“Arya,” his voice comes back startled and she feels her eyelids fluttering, trying to open slowly.

“Are you alright?” is her immediate question, before she can even see him. The chamber is dark, illuminated only by that one candle in her nightstand and she can’t make much of his form.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking this?” his tone is somewhere between relieve and amusement. He’s closer now and in the faint light, Arya can’t make any injuries. She manages to sit on the bed without any help, “Are you alright?”

She smiles a bit at the way he reproduces her words, “Not my worst”

“That’s good,” he smiles with her.

“Where have you been?”

“Putting down some fires in the city,” he answers, trying to seem nonchalant. However, Arya can see he’s bothered by something. “Then I had to bath and have something to eat before coming here”

She observes him while he sits beside her on the bed, trying to decide if she should give voice to her questions this time.

“Is there something wrong?” she enquires with gentleness.

“Why do you ask?” he’s surprised by her sudden question and she shrugs a bit, avoiding abrupt motions.

“You seem bothered by something”

“Oh,” it’s all he says for a moment and she waits, “it’s just that… The fire was near where my mum used to work”

It’s her time to say, “Oh,” she’s not sure what to say next, afraid of touching the delicate matter. “Did anyone you know get hurt?”

He shakes his head, “No, not closely”

When he doesn’t say anything else, she goes on, “Is your mother...?”

“She died when I was little,” he states without much emotion. It’s a fact that doesn’t seem to trouble him any longer. “It’s just that… it’s strange to see it happening there then coming back here and not be affected at all by it anymore”

Arya nods, understanding what he means. Not that it’s her case. Actually, it’s quite the opposite, her being so distant physically from Winterfell but still feeling inside her that she will be coming back. Gendry, by the other hand, has theoretically gone up in life and shouldn’t go back to the life of a commoner in the streets of King’s Landing.

But somehow, his words make her feel closer to him. Understanding anything about him does that to her.

They exchange goodnights and Arya can’t help but notice how it’s much easier to get comfortable with Gendry’s weight where it should be, on his side of the bed.

* * *

Something is wrong and she knows it the minute she leaves her bedchambers.

At first, she thinks it’s the purple bruise on her face that has been getting people’s eyes, so she doesn’t pay much attention.

She hadn’t left her rooms since the incident in the streets of King’s Landing, days ago and that being the first time she does, she goes to the Keep’s Weirwood.

It’s not the same as Winterfell, she understood that from the moment she set foot on the place. It doesn’t feel as powerful as they had up North. But still, it makes her feel more at home than anywhere South.

It also doesn’t get frequent visitors, which is another attractive point. Even Beth seemed hesitant to enter the place, saying it gave her chills.

“It’s supposed to do that, Beth,” Arya tried to ease her maid when they had been there the first time. “It’s where the gods have more power.”

However, Beth still favored to avoid entering too deep into the Godswood with her, giving preference to the stone bench by the entrance.

Arya enjoys her time alone. Sometimes she only wants to savor the strong energy coming from the woods, but sometimes she prays too. For her mother and brother in the Riverlands, fighting to avenge her father. For her sister, lost somewhere, hoping she’s safe. She prays for her two younger brothers that are still in Winterfell, protecting their home and carrying much more weight than any of them ever expected they would have to. She prays for her half-brother on the Wall, tracing a new path that she knows nothing of. For her father’s ward, Theon, who always felt like family too. She prays for all the people in Winterfell she had known and cared once. She prays for herself, for a way to escape and she prays for Gendry, for his loyalty to her to be just as his care.

It’s more like a recollection than praying, some of the time.

She leaves when it’s past the middle of the day, finding Beth sitting on the same bench she always does, sleeping so profoundly anyone could think it’s nighttime. Arya can’t blame her, thinking the girl had been spending too much time taking care of her lately.

Arya giggles, watching her maid snoring quietly, and she’s about to touch her shoulder, when she looks around. She can’t see anyone near, not even a guard.

She knows the Weirwoods generally receive only her visit, so it’s not uncommon for the floor to be quite empty, but she has never seen it with no one other than Beth and her.

_ And Beth is asleep _ , she thinks immediately.

She looks around one more time, considering her options. She just wants to take a look nearby, not having much of a chance with Beth beside her, the maid being always hesitant to walk on certain places of the Red Keep. She doesn’t know if it’s because she was ordered to keep Arya from there or if she has her own personal reasons, but now she can’t stop thinking that’s one hell of an opportunity she won’t have again soon. And if she’s quick enough, she’ll be back before Beth is awake.

Stepping away as silently as she can, Arya feels a shiver descending her spine, the same apprehension that makes her want to stop giving her impulse to continue on.

The Godswood are more like a garden than anything else in Arya’s opinion. They are surrounded by tall walls, too close to feel truly like the woods should. There’s some few steps in the entrance and she’s now on a long corridor of stone, no one at sight. Not one guard, not one lost soul coming or going from the library or the sept.

That’s how she knows something has happened.

Still, she doesn’t stop, following in the general direction of the armory, knowing she went that way when she found the ladders down to that passage. She just stops when she reaches the end of the corridor, setting foot on a small yard with the floor covered in stone, encircled by columns. She can see a Gold Cloak here and she’s about to hide behind one of the poles when she’s interrupted.

“Lady Arya,” the voice is familiar and hearing it brings no pleasure to Arya, freezing the girl in her tracks for an instant.

“Lord Baelish,” she compliments politely, turning to face the man who watches her with rehearsed curiosity. She curtsies, not bothering to force a smile, “I didn’t know you were back in King’s Landing”

“I only arrived yesterday,” he explains, getting closer to Arya. “May I ask what are you doing here alone, my Lady?”

“Oh, I was praying at the Godswood and came to look for my husband at the barracks,” she can’t help but to mentally pat her own back in pride for coming up with an excuse so quickly, the lodging of the Golden Cloaks being near enough to make it believe.

It Littlefinger suspects she was going somewhere else, he doesn’t show, “Oh, yes, allow me to congratulate you on your wedding with Ser Gendry”

It’s only then that Arya realizes how long he had been gone. Littlefinger wasn’t present at her wedding. Gods, she thinks she hasn’t seen him since before Ned’s death.

“Thank you, my lord,” she says nonchalantly, because there’s nothing else she can say there.

“Marriage seems to suit well, Lady,” he compliments. “You have grown ever more beautiful in my absence. Has anyone ever told you how similar you are to your aunt Lyanna?”

_ Constantly _ , she thinks, mentally groaning. It was very common for people at court to mention the resemblance she shared with her late aunt and she didn’t enjoy much. It felt like people weren’t seeing her, but a ghost.

The only person who seemed to truly distinguish them when mentioning their likeness was her father.

“Yes, I have heard of it,” Arya sounds a bit cold to her own ears.

“Much like your sister is like your mother,” he comments in a knowing way and she feels a less thrilled shiver down her spine this time.

Littlefinger had always creeped her out when it came to Sansa. More than once she had caught glimpses of him watching her in a disturbing way and hearing him mention her sister like that felt as worse.

“She has heard of it even more than I did,” she’s definitely cold now, but he doesn’t seem to mind her tone.

“Yes, I can imagine it,” Lord Baelish sounds almost distracted, “I just hope she has more luck than Lady Stark”

His unexpected commentary has Arya ready to strangle him. Damn those men inside that Keep that thought speaking in riddles made them so smart.

Had something happened to her mother? Was that related to the missing people in the castle?

Because she wasn’t like the rest of the people on the Red Keep, she asks, “I’m sorry, Lord Baelish, have I lost something? Did something happen?”

He raises an eyebrow in studied surprise and she’s  _ so _ tired of his measured actions after just that exchange of words.

“Haven’t you heard about Lord Renly, my Lady?”

_ Lord Renly? _ What the fuck?

“I have not”

“He’s dead,” Littlefinger informs. “He died between his own army, murdered”

“Murdered? By whom?”

He smiles with renewed amusement, “There’s some conflict on the answer to that question. Some say that it was made by the hands of one of his Rainbow Guards. There are whispers of his brother Stannis too. And there’s some who said it wasn’t a man, but a woman,” and here he trails off for a moment. Arya thinks that strangling isn’t  _ enough _ anymore. “A maid Renly refused or… your Lady Mother”

Arya tries to process his words. Why would Catelyn kill Renly? Why were there rumors of it? Why had she gone to Storm’s End?

She doesn’t think her mother capable of murdering Renly Baratheon, but the idea that people thought it possible disturbed her all the same.

Then her mind wanders to another place. Renly Baratheon is dead. And she was quite possibly the last one to know inside that castle.

“Does everyone know of this?”

“Oh yes, King Joffrey reunited part of the court to celebrate”

She nods, with only one thought in head at the moment.

“I must go now, Lord Baelish,” she announces, already passing him through quickly and taking the opposite direction that she planned when going there. She starts running, not caring about keeping any appearance of composure like she usually does.

All she cares about right now is that Renly Baratheon is dead and Gendry probably already knows.

Arya understands there are some hard feelings between them, but she knows it doesn’t mean he won’t feel for his sudden death. He doesn’t have many people in his life as far as she knows and Renly had been one of them.

She keeps running, passing the Godwoods’s entrance, where she can hear Beth screaming her name. She goes on, entering the Throne tower, where Gendry had told her he’d be today.

The gallery that leads to the Iron Throne is full of people, but that’s not where she goes. There is a balcony on each side of the imposing chamber and she goes straight to the left one, climbing the stairs and thinking that it was fortunate that Gendry had told her where he was sent to in case she needed him.

He’s not alone when she finds him.

Not only is he accompanied by other guards, but by the Hound too. She doesn’t bite back the grunt of seeing the man. She despises him and he surely knows it.

But he is, in a way, Gendry’s superior, being part of the Kingsguard, and right now he seems to be making use of the position, ordering something to Gendry and his colleagues.

Her husband doesn’t seem affected by nothing at first and she could almost think she had worried too much, but the little she knows of Gendry is that his impassive face hides his mind and heart.

And so, she doesn’t hesitate to say, “Can I have a word with Ser Gendry for a moment?”

She doesn’t look at him, addressing the Hound directly, even if she didn’t call him by any name.

He stares at her and, for her surprise, says, “Don’t take long.”

She still doesn’t look at Gendry, just entering one of the chambers aside and listening to his steps following her.

“Is everything alright?” he asks with worry as soon as he enters the room behind her.

When she turns to him, she searches for something on his eyes as he gets rid of his helmet. “I came here to ask that same question”

He seems confused now.

“I’ve heard about Renly’s death and had to check on you”

“Oh,” he’s surprised now and for a while none of them speak.

Their relationship has a lot of it, Arya always thinks. A lot of gaps of silence when neither of them knows exactly what to say, but that somehow have more feeling than any other conversation she has with most people.

She had always been a talkative person, but it feels refreshing to share quietness with Gendry. It feels like peace.

“I appreciate that you did,” Gendry speaks first, coming closer to her and she feels something boiling inside of her, bubbling with anticipation just by his closeness.

“And are you alright?” she whispers.

“I am,” he reassures her. “It took me by surprise, but it didn’t affect me”

Gendry’s eyes rest on the floor now and she sees he’s lost in thoughts. She wants to get near him and search his eyes. She wants to try and read in the deep blue what he is thinking.

But she doesn’t move, waiting.

“I think I always knew I wouldn’t get to see him again,” it’s what he finally says. “He left me here, in the mouth of the wolves, and there was no coming back from it”

“Lions,” Arya corrects him without thinking and he smirks. The sight makes something inside her melt.

“Yes, lions,” he agrees, still smirking.

There’s something between them at that moment, something Arya doesn’t know how to name.

“I—” she begins, not quite knowing where she’s going.

When she doesn’t continue, he says, “I have a free day tomorrow”

She waits again, thinking how they had shared his last day off.

“I’ll go to the city in the morning, but I thought we could—” he trails off, scratching the nape of his neck, but she doesn’t mind, because she knows exactly what he is asking.

“Yes,” she says. “We can spent the rest of the day together”

He smiles again and she watches as the surroundings of his eyes crinkle beautifully. “Good.”

She grins too, savoring that thing between them.

“I—” he stutters, breaking their eye contact. “I have to get back”

“Sure,” Arya nods. “I have to go find Beth too”

They both leave the room and he goes back to the same spot she had found him earlier while she turns to go away.

She doesn’t stop smiling the entire way back.

* * *

The next morning, Arya stares intently at her dresses and petticoats.

It’s not exactly that she’s overthinking her garments. She doesn’t think it would make a difference, Gendry had seen her in her nightgown and disheveled by the act of a whole horde. No, what she cares is that she doesn’t know what they are going to do.

She doesn’t know if he had anything planned either, he had left so early that she didn’t have the opportunity to ask.

So she keeps looking at her clothes, not sure if she should prepare for something different. Or as different as possible within castle walls.

Well, there’s  _ one _ thing she wishes she ought to do, but she’s not sure if Gendry will have the disposition.

“Are you looking for something, m’lady?” Beth asks when she enters the room and finds Arya gazing so intently at her wardrobe.

“Not exactly, no,” Arya doesn’t look away from the furniture when she answers. “Just—don’t know what to wear.”

“Do you have anything planned for the rest of the day, m’lady?”

“Gendry has the day off and we’re doing something,” she still doesn’t divert her eyes from her clothing, but this time she’s doing it to avoid Beth. She feels herself getting blushed and it’s so ridiculous…

Her maid just hums, not wanting to enquire further, probably out of politeness and whatever bullshit servants have to learn.

Beth knows of the odd nature of her marriage. It’s hard for a chambermaid that stays as close as her to not know such a thing. She obviously never questions anything and Arya, not sure of where they stand, doesn’t comment on the subject.

Maybe if she shared with her some things, she would have a chance to understand better her own feelings. And maybe his, too.

“I don’t know what we’re doing, actually,” Arya announces out loud. “He just asked to spend the day with me. And I don’t know what to wear because I don’t know what we’re doing and…”

That was the delicate part that she didn’t know how to address.

“I—I don’t think he has anything planned either, to be quite honest,” she tries to explain. “And there’s something I wanted to do but I’m not sure what will be his reaction”

She’s blushing again and she stuttered while saying those things and,  _ fuck _ , Beth will definitely get the wrong idea after this.

When she looks at the girl, her eyes are wide and she doesn’t say a word.

“Oh, fuck,” Arya mutters and Beth gets flustered, not usually seeing her mistress cursing. “It’s just that—back at home, I used to practice with swords a lot and I haven’t done it since we came to King’s Landing. And I really miss it”

She explains all of it in one breath. Really, she had thought of asking it to him before, since he seemed so acceptant of her fighting habit, and it seemed like a good opportunity to ask him. But it would have some severe limitations.

“I see,” it’s all Beth answers at first.

“He knows I used to fight at home,” Arya continues her explanation and her maid gets closer, not so disconcerted anymore. “And he even showed me his sword.”

Now it’s Arya’s time to get all flustered, a new meaning behind her own words hitting her. By the gods, when did she become  _ this _ kind of mess?

“No, I mean—”

“I understood, m’lady,” Beth interrupts her, smiling a little, doubtless avoiding to fully laugh at her mistress.

And Arya thought she was being ridiculous  _ before _ … She laughs at herself and doesn’t say anything, not sure where her timidity comes from.

Well, now she had even more feelings to unravel.

“I think,” Beth says when she sees Arya won’t continue. “I think Ser Gendry would do whatever you asked, m’lady”

Arya feels her mouth fall agape, stunned by Beth’s words.

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s just a feeling,” her maid states like it’s nothing much, like her words didn’t affect Arya’s entire balance.

* * *

When Gendry arrives in their chambers, he carries something.

“I come bearing gifts,” he announces as soon as he enters, a bigger smile than Arya has ever seen on his face.

A smile that freezes as soon as he sees her.

She’s alone, having sent Beth away until supper, and she’s wearing the garments she usually did when sparring in Winterfell: breeches, a cotton shirt and a leather jerkin made for her—when her mother realized that there was no fighting Arya’s habits, she sighed and made her boy clothes, it was this or having her stealing Bran’s.

She gets suddenly nervous, thinking that she might have overstepped when he doesn’t do a thing besides looking at her.

It’s nothing much to her, she’s so used to the clothes by now. She felt euphoric to wear them again after so long, her breeches and jerkin clinging perfectly on her, the absence of the weight of her usual layers freeing.

But it doesn’t seem like  _ nothing much _ to Gendry.

“Where did you get this?” he breaks the silence, still eyeing her intently and Arya notices she was  _ so wrong _ . His gaze is so penetrating and she realizes that, yes, her clothing does make difference for him.

She feels as exposed as she did on that first night.

“I brought with me from Winterfell,” she answers weakly, puzzled by his reaction.

He takes some slow steps towards her, still looking with so much intensity he doesn’t seem to blink.

“It—it suits you,” he finally says, standing near her now. She can see that he’s blushing and it almost makes her blush too.

“Thanks,” she’s timid in her response. Then, she explained, “I wanted to ask you something”

“Oh yeah?” he’s looking her in the eyes now, interested.

“Yeah, I—” Arya hesitates, still scared he will dismiss her and think wrongly of her request. “I thought we could—have a round of fencing or something.”

Her voice gets lower and lower with each word and she hates how the confidence she had felt when she wore the breeches was gone.

“You want to have a match?” he raises one eyebrow, but he’s smiling now and she feels somewhat assured by his reaction.

“It’s been so long and—I miss it,” she shrugs.

“Of course you do,” he nods, still grinning. Then his smile freezes again, like he realized something. He’s serious when he says, “I think it’s a great idea, Arya, but where could do something like this?”

She had thought of that, of course. They couldn’t just practice in any of the usual places for such a thing, much too open.

“I thought we could try to do it here?” it ends up like a question.

“Here?” he looks around. It’s not a small room. It does have some furniture that could get in the way, but it was nothing that they couldn’t move.

She watches expectantly while he measures their surroundings.

“We can put the table close to the bed. And the wardrobe. And the partition”

He nods. “I think we can,” then he smiles. “I think we should”

And they do.

They put every piece of furniture they can carry on one corner and in the end, the space is unexpectedly large.

It begins cautiously, their sparring. Arya is using Needle, a sword that is too skinny, too little even for her nowadays. And she hasn’t fought in months now, so she starts slowly.

Gendry, of course, knows all that, so he’s going with gentleness too.

When they pick up a good rhythm, Arya notices a lot about him. He’s hesitant and she thinks it’s not because he’s fighting  _ her _ , but because he doesn’t have much years of practice.

And he seems insecure, too. It makes him a bit clumsy.

She’s no expert, having only her own experience and years of observation of her brothers, but she thinks he would do better with something heavier. The sword seems lost between his large arms and hands.

“Who taught you?” she asks when they take a break, dragging the chairs back. They are panting and covered in sweat and she feels  _ so _ good. She really had missed it, the feeling of using her whole body, of turning off her mind.

Arya had prepared for the after too, having a big jar of cold water ready.

He has something to give her too, handing her some biscuits wrapped in a fabric. Gendry’s baker friend had sent those to her, claiming that if he couldn’t personally meet his bride, he would at least send the girl a gift for enduring his grumpy face.

“Renly,” Gendry returns to her question drinking from the goblet she offered him.

“He taught you personally?” she couldn’t help but be incredulous. He just shakes his head in agreement. “It wasn’t long ago, was it?”

Gendry examines her. “Is it obvious?”

“Not obvious, I don’t think so,” she assures him.

“It wasn’t long ago because I didn’t stay as his ward for long”

She decides that, since he touched the subject, he won’t mind if she asks one thing or two. He could always not answer.

“When did you become his ward?”

“Only last year,” he says simply.

Last year? It really wasn’t the reply she expected. Theon had been under Ned’s protection for longer than she could name it. Of course, wards could come in every age, but still…

“And you lived here in King’s Landing formerly?” she enquiries.

“Yes, working as a blacksmith, like I told you before,” he doesn’t falter in saying it.

Why had Renly done it? Why had he had the trouble of taking Gendry from King’s Landing, trained him, given him a last name, made him a knight—she doesn’t know this for sure, but it feels safe to assume—only to ditch him there?

There was, obviously,  _ another factor _ to take account.

“Why you?”

Gendry doesn’t answer right away.

“He came to the shop one day,” he says, a bit lost in his memories. “He says he wants to offer me more than that life. It didn’t matter much to me, all those things he said about money and a life of comfort. I liked smiting, I wasn’t so bad at it”

Arya observes while he explains, lost in his concentration.

“But then there’s something he says. It’s not much for him, but for a bastard boy without a mum and who never knew a dad, it’s a lot… He said I could have a name, you know. And I didn’t know I wanted one so much until he said it”

He seems far from there for a moment, but then he looks into her eyes, and she sees that unbelievable tone of blue, that tone that was so uniquely his.

“He said some other stuff that was nice too. I’d always have food, I’d use the smithy whenever I wanted… And when I asked why me, he said that would have some people looking for me, people that wouldn’t be as nice. And I believed it, because he wasn’t the first to look for me. The Hand had been there too, before he died”

She knows he means Jon Arryn, because he was already at the palace when her father was the Hand of the King.

But everything he just told her tightens her heart.

As someone who was born into a big house, she would never truly understand that feeling of not having a family name. Gods, she could track all the Starks for so many generations she would be easily lost, while Gendry didn’t even know the identity of his father. It was  _ so _ unfair.

“And after you got in Storm’s End?” she whispers.

“It was okay,” Gendry shrugs, looking away from her again. “He treated me like I was some important lord, like the ones that visited him sometimes. He said I could do anything I wanted there, as long as I learned my letters and to fight. I didn’t know why he cared about that, but it didn’t seem like much.”

He takes a biscuit from Arya’s package, distracted by his own story. She had been so distracted herself that she hadn’t stopped to prove any yet.

Before she can, Gendry continues, “It was a strange set of months, like a holiday or something. I enjoyed it, but I never felt completely at home. And then the Hand died and we came back to King’s Landing and everything got strange,” he is grimacing now, like he still doesn’t understand what happened. “Renly just convinced the King to take me as guard, said to me I shouldn’t get much attention to myself”

“Not so easy, is it?” Arya can’t help the question.

He looks at her, “How come?”

“Your looks,” she says. “You look too much like him.”

Even if he didn’t look that much like Renly or any other Baratheon brother, he’d still get attention, he was too beautiful to go unnoticed. But of course she doesn’t say it.

“Yeah, they mention that a lot,” Gendry scoffs, annoyed, and she thinks of herself and her reaction to comparisons to her aunt.

She thinks she never heard Gendry speak that much and she doesn’t want to push it, but the opportunity seemed too good to let pass.

“Do you think you’re related to him?” she questions carefully.

“I think so, yeah,” he’s not comfortable with the idea, that much is clear to her. “Why else would he go through so much trouble?”

She nods, and they fall silent.

It’s a lot to process.

Distractedly, she reaches for the forgotten wrapping in her hand and gets a biscuit. When she puts it in her mouth, the buttery taste surprises her, “Oh my gods, this is so good!”

Her words break the silence so suddenly that Gendry starts to laugh. It’s an unprecedented sound to her ears and it makes her stomach flutters. It makes her laugh as well.

And just like that, the seriousness of the subject it’s lost on their amusement.

* * *

Tommen’s kittens had a hiding spot in Maegor’s Holdfast.

Of course, he had some others in his bedchambers too, but Cersei didn’t allow him to take all the lost cats he wanted to his rooms. Still, he fed and took care of all the animals that showed up in the Red Keep and there was a lot.

It wasn’t because of Cersei that he hid them. The Queen didn’t exactly approve of the idea of her younger child being obsessed with little cats of all things, however he was her kid and she clearly liked to spoil all of them.

No, they were hidden from Joffrey, who had more than once killed them in front of his brother for his own enjoyment.

Arya is quite positive that he does this type of thing on purpose. She can imagine him at night, thinking with himself,  _ What could I do to make me seem even more evil? _ And then the next day he’s killing kittens.

In any case,  _ she _ knows about the hiding spot since Tommen had told her, seeing how she liked the animals herself, and she goes there once in a while. It’s not even a real covert, it’s a chamber in the lower levels of the Holdfast that no one of importance—especially the King—goes.

She thinks it’s been a while that she had been there, probably since Myrcella went away, so that’s where she’s spending her morning that day.

“There’s five more,” Tommen tells her with excitement when she arrives. He’s sitting on the ground, surrounded by animals, a tiny tabby cat on his lap and a gray one on one arm. He’s accompanied by an old woman that doesn’t seem too happy about her duties involving that quantity of tails.

The Prince is already fourteen and Arya considers that a bit old to walk escorted at all times—well, she’s a married woman and  _ she _ still has one of those, but she is a hostage while Tommen is a Prince in his castle. She knows it’s a bit unfair of her to compare him with her own brothers, but still, it feels like Cersei overprotects her children.

But then again, Tommen is now the only one she still has some control of.

He reminds Arya of her own little brothers, Bran and Rickon, even if the Prince’s sweet temper isn’t much like any of theirs.

Bran is considerably more adventurous and Rickon is a wild child, impossible to control. However, there was something about him that blossomed the older sister sentiment on her.

“I named them Gold, Ox, Cherries, Myrcie and Cakes,” he points one by one and Arya can’t help but admire his memory. There are at least fifteen cats here and he can identify and name them from a distance.

She gets closer, Beth following her closely, not caring for the cats as much as Tommen’s companion. The animals let them get closer, rubbing their heads on their dresses and meowing.

Arya gets on her knees and scrubs the nearest one, an adult black cat. “Hello”

Most of them are docile, probably already comfortable thanks to that place where they can eat and rest without being bothered. However that black cat is not one of those. She thinks he’s one of the new ones Tommen just introduced.

“You don’t like me? Is that it?” She laughs at the cat’s seriousness, not a sign of enjoyment in response to her caresses. When she tries to stop, he howls in discontent and she decides she likes him. Maybe he just has a resting displeasure face.

Another creature joins them, this time a white female that she remembers seeing before. She’s called Mini, if Arya recalls rightly, and she rubs her ears while she climbs in her lap, “Oh, dear, aren’t you big?”

She is. Not that she had gotten taller, Arya doesn’t think she’d notice it. But she is definitely larger.

“I think you’ll have more babies to take care soon, Your Grace,” she speaks louder so Tommen can hear and stands up, holding Mini in her arms. She’s so sweet, she’s soon cuddling Arya and the girl swoons.

“Yes,” the boy answers with delight, the idea that he already had  _ too many _ not seeming to pass through him. “I think I’ll bring one of Myrcie’s doll beds for her, I think she’ll like to be in something more comfortable”

“Do you think your sister will approve?” Arya asks with amusement, thinking that her own sister would have screamed if she did such a thing.

Tommen gets more serious, “Mom says she’ll be a married woman now and that she won’t play with dolls anymore”

Yes, naturally Myrcella wouldn’t have much opportunity for dolls anymore. She won’t marry right away, just like Sansa didn’t come to court to wed Joffrey immediately. But still, by the time she’d see the Red Keep again she will be the bride to the Prince of Dorne, not a girl who can play with toys.

The thought saddens her a little, just like it does Tommen.

“So,” Arya pronounces, trying to sound happier. “So you should bring more doll beds here, or else the other will get jealous of Mini and try to steal it”

The boy laughs at that and she joins him.

“M’lady,” Beth interrupts them and when she turns to her maid, she understands why.

Gendry is descending the stairs.

“Hi,” Arya compliments, still grinning, but when she looks at his face, he’s deadly serious.

“Your Grace,” Gendry curtsies to Tommen, then turns to her, “My lady”

She knows something is wrong right away. Not only by his grave expression, but he’s too formal with her. Not even Tommen’s presence would make him sound like that so suddenly.

She doesn’t say anything, expecting him to continue.

“My lady, I need to speak with you in private,” he announces and before she can move to a corner of the room, he continues, “in our chambers, if possible”

Arya nods and she’s nervous, but at the same time, hopeful. The last time he had been that serious was after Robb’s victory and, maybe, just maybe, something similar had happened.

She tells Beth she can find her by supper, as she usually does when she spends the day with Gendry. If this is anything like the last time, she won’t be leaving her chambers anyway.

He takes her arm, just like when they were going to the tournament, but this time he’s moving much faster, like he’s trying to get the alone as fast as possible.

“How did you know where I was?” She tries to lighten the mood, but he’s still serious when he answers.

“You told me you were thinking of visiting the cats”

The only sounds that come from them are their steps echoing through Maegor’s Holdfast’s halls.

“What happened, Gendry?” she can’t wait any longer. He isn’t looking at her, his eyes gazed up front and she doesn’t know if he’s directly avoiding her.

They climb more stairs and he still doesn’t say anything.

“Gendry?”

“The Hand asked me to deliver you some news,” he’s so solemn it frightens her. What did Tyrion Lannister want with her? And he had sent Gendry instead of asking to speak with her himself?

They finally reach their bedchamber and Arya sits on their bed. Gendry delays his movements, seeming hesitant now that they are alone.

“Lord Tyrion thought that, as your husband, I should be the one to tell you that” he pronounces and she rests in silent expectation.

He walks in circles, staring at the floor as it would come up with a way to soften the news he was supposed to deliver.

She noticed then that he had no helmet on and he wasn't wearing it when he went to her either. That was undoubtedly strange.

“Gendry, you are making me anxious,” she sounds a little exasperated, but who can blame her, really?

“Sorry,” he shrinks, cringing, and stops in front of her. But when he continues, his voice is only sincerity, “I’m so very sorry, Arya”

Something inside of her retracts at his words and all hope she might have that something good like another of her brothers victory has happened is gone. She stands up, startled. “Was it my brother? Something happened to Robb?”

“Not Robb, no,” his sadness spread coldness throughout her body.

“Did they find Sansa? Is my sister dead?” she’s closer to him not, desperation leaking through her voice and her movements.

“No, Arya, it was Bran and Rickon”

Bran and Rickon? But that wasn’t possible. They were safe. They were in Winterfell and they were safe.

She thinks she says that, because Gendry shakes his head and responds, “I’m so so sorry, but someone got to them”

It makes no sense, why would they want to get Bran and Rickon? They weren’t who they wanted, they were little more than children.

_ You are little more than a child too and they have you _ , something desperate inside of her says and she knows it’s true.

“No,” suddenly she has no strength to keep standing. She’s on her knees and there’s something opening inside of her.

“Arya,” Gendry’s voice is gentle and he lowers to her level, to look her in the eyes. “Arya, I’m very sorry but there is more”

More? How could there be more? How could anything beyond that exist? How could the world continue on if there was no Bran and Rickon?

She just notices there are tears pooling her eyes when she looks at Gendry and sees her own pain reflected on his blue eyes.

“It wasn’t the Lannisters, Arya,” he whispers. “It was Theon Greyjoy”

And for a frantic moment, she thinks he might be wrong, that Tyrion Lannister is lying for both of them because why would Theon, playful sarcastic Theon, do anything bad to her brothers? He was her family too; he was Robb’s best friend and her father’s ward.

“He attacked Winterfell and declared himself its Lord from now own”

There’s so much kindness in his tone, and yet, each word is a new cut inside of her.

_ Never trust a Greyjoy _ , her mother’s words reverberate in that moment and, somehow, she knows all of that is madness and true.

And then she starts sobbing, she can’t stop anymore.

Gendry embraces her smoothly and she lets herself fall into his arms, a howl that is more animal than human leaving her while her pain dominates her.

She cries and cries and cries.

She cries for Bran and Rickon, for Winterfell, for Theon’s treason. And she continues to cry, for her mother who just lost two children, for Robb, that lost not only his brothers, but his friend.

And she cries one time for the memory of the family she once had, the family she would never return to.

All the time, Gendry allows her lamentations, holding her with force and gentleness at the same time.

That night, when they go to sleep, he’s still holding her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mari, the person that allows this story to happen by hyping me everytime i finish a scene, drew my attention for possible misleadings on that last scene. i'm so sorry if you thought this was going on to be just fluff and ended up sad. i hope you take comfort in knowing it was sad for me too.
> 
> now, raise you hands who thinks arya's got it bad? i know right.


	4. my wounded wing’s still beating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is survivor's guilt a reason for warning? if so, beware! (it's not much, though)

_My wounded wing's still beating._

Sleeping in Gendry’s arms was far more natural than Arya would ever expect.

They never really speak of it, she just finds herself embraced by him every night ever since that day and she’s incredibly thankful for it.

Her head rests on his chest and he has one arm around her, tracing patterns on her shift covered skin, sometimes resting his chin on her hair. It’s warm and terribly intimate, but it doesn’t fright Arya. She knows he is doing it to comfort her and she appreciates it.

He still asks her about her days and she does the same to him, wanting a distraction from her grieving filled routine. They are preparing for battle and he shares with her news of that, of Stannis invading Storm’s End, of Tyrion burning the surroundings of the Red Keep, of them not knowing what is to come. He is just telling her all of this, Arya notices. He’s not passionate on the subject, he’s just caught in the middle of the fight and she thinks how wrong she was for thinking he was so loyal to the Crown. He doesn’t really care about it.

Slumber doesn’t come with ease, so they talk and she’s content for having him, not knowing what she’d do if she’d been alone.

When she finally does sleep, it’s not peaceful, not even her husband’s embrace can take away her bad dreams. However, she finds comfort in having him when she wakes from these nightmares and knowing he’s there.

Sleeping in Gendry’s arms was easy.

The horrible part was waking up alone.

He had to be gone early and did it carefully, not wanting to wake her up, which meant she never saw him leave the bed.

Most nights, her dreams were filled with her family and she would wake up missing the heat of Gendry’s body. It terrified her, not being able to close her eyes without seeing all of them, almost if expecting her to do something.  _ Do something, Arya _ .

All she really did was weep.

Beth always found her already awake, but never out of bed. She had nowhere to go, so there was no point in getting up. Leaving her chambers would only mean pitiful stares from the same people that were expecting to see what little remained of her family dead.

She didn’t make much of the rest of her day either.

“Beth said you’re not eating,” Gendry comments one night when they’re entangled.

“It feels wrong,” it’s all she says, staring at the dark.

“What does?”

“Everything,” she swallows, “Everything feels wrong. Here I am, sleeping in a featherbed, living in a castle, feeding from the enemy’s food and… and… by their side, while I do nothing. I just sit here and walk through these halls, being only one half of me”

Arya says it all in one raging breath. It’s the first time she says something of the sort to Gendry, but she doesn’t mind. If he was loyal to the Lannisters, he’d have done something to her by now, and he had proven to her more than once that it wasn’t the case. She thought about it more times than she could name and she prayed to the gods she was right, because she couldn’t take it if he turned against her now that she decided to trust him.

They are still embraced and she can’t look at him from this position, so she just waits quietly, feeling his firm chest rise and drop. “You know that what happened to your brothers isn’t your fault, don’t you?”

She doesn’t say anything. In a way, yes, she knows it’s not her fault, she wasn’t in Winterfell to protect them, and she isn’t beside the people that got to  _ them _ . But if it’s not her doing, then why does she feel so guilty?

“Arya,” Gendry calls her with kindness and she almost searches his eyes. “You aren’t here because you want, you can’t just walk out. It’s no use to blame yourself for something that is beyond you”

She still doesn’t say anything but she can feel the intensity of his conviction burning on her skin.

“You didn’t choose to be here while Bran and Rickon, or Sansa, or you mother and Robb were all guarding themselves and your house,” he’s more determined in every word and her heart swells listening to him defending her of her own mind. “And if you could, you would join every single one of them and defend them all with your hands and your sword and they know that because they’re your family, Arya. And I hope your opportunity isn’t far, because you’d be damn good at it. But until then, please, don’t go damaging yourself over something you couldn’t control”

That time her head leaves his torso so she can look for his eyes. She needs to see it for herself, because she had never heard him speak with so much feeling before and when she does, she’s suddenly breathless. His form is barely distinguishable in the faint light of the chamber, but what she can see of his face has so much sentiment written over it that she quivers. He was never one easy to read, always keeping his thoughts far from his expressions, but right now she can see it, clear as day, how much he cares for her.

And in one second, everything seems different, the air charged with that same feeling she sees on his face.

She searches for something to say, something that will grapple everything that she’s feeling right now. All that she ménages to find is a quiet, “Okay”

It doesn’t feel enough, though, so she lies back to her previous position, tucking her body on his, trying to get closer to him. It still doesn’t feel enough.

She doesn’t understand what it is, the thing that seems to be missing, the thing that would make him see how much it meant to her all that he said.

“Good,” he responds, holding her back and enlacing a finger in the lock of hair on the end of her long braid with such spontaneity that one would think he had done it uncountable times.

That’s how they stay until sleep overtakes them, the emotion of his words never leaving her thoughts.

* * *

The following day, Arya gets out of bed, wanting to at least try and make an effort after Gendry’s words, the part where he rooted that she’d reunite with her family again pushing her forward.

Her determination fades slightly when she stares in the mirror. She looks ill, her bad dreams made clear by the dark marks under her eyes, her skin so pale that her shift seems to be part of her. And of course, she’s completely disheveled since she didn’t care enough about her appearance being inside that chamber for days.

_ I look like a child’s drawing of a wight _ , she thinks with frustration.

Still, she keeps analyzing her own reflex. Growing, she had studied her image for so long; she had come to the conclusion she wasn’t terribly ugly as she was led to believe once, when Sansa and her friends used to tease her about her looks.

No, she wasn’t really ugly. She just wasn’t pretty.

Especially when compared with her sister, with her luminous red hair, bright blue eyes and emotions well concealed in a pretty smile. When put by Sansa’s side, Arya was painfully  _ plain _ , with her brown dark brown hair and big gray eyes. She looked paler—even if Sansa was paler, spending less time outside than Arya—and colorless.

It didn’t bother Arya for most of the time. She didn’t want to be Sansa.

Sansa was destined to a bigger wedding than Arya would ever wish for herself, betrothed to the Prince of Westeros from a young age. She had a different pressure under her, knowing that she’d unite their house with the royal family of Westeros and be Queen someday. She wanted that.

Arya, by the other hand, couldn’t think of something she wished less. She was thankful that she had never had something of the sort traced for her future. She knew she was meant for a marriage much smaller and the idea was already unpleasant, she could never deal with something as grand as being wed to the heir to the Iron Throne.

Indubitably Sansa had been the chosen one for being the eldest and, by the gods, how Arya was thankful that this was the case. Her life would currently be in a much worse state if  _ she _ had been the one betrothed to King Joffrey. But sometimes, in the back of her mind, she couldn’t silence the voice that whispered that she wasn’t pretty enough for this too. If she had been good-looking, she would have been at least considered.

She shakes her head, trying to get rid of the intrusive thought.  _ You never wanted this, you know that _ , she reminds herself and it’s true. She never wanted to be betrothed to a Prince. She just wanted to be pretty enough to be considered an option.

“M’lady!” Beth is surprised when she enters the bedchamber, not expecting to find Arya out of bed.

She turns from her reflex, feeling awful to be absorbed in her image right now, when her sister was missing and two of her brothers were dead.  _ Futile _ , she reprimands herself,  _ just like all the other people inside that castle. Vain and futile. _

“Good day, Beth,” she compliments, the weight of her thoughts leaking through her voice. “Would you please do me the kindness of preparing a bath?”

Beth nods and leaves Arya alone with her thoughts again and she’s back at feeling guilty and undeserving of her life, wanting nothing more than to curl herself in the bed once more.  _ That’s futile too _ , she thinks and, by the gods, how she hates her own mind today.

The first place Arya goes when she finally leaves her bedchamber is the Godswood. She doesn’t know why, the gods don’t seem to be doing much for her lately, but still, it seems right to do so.

It’s probably the place in the Red Keep less affected by the dense smoke spread after all the burnings ordered by Tyrion and it pleases her a little, to think that her gods couldn’t be touched by his actions while all the rest did.

Beth enters the woods with her this time and she’s not sure if it’s because she had run last time or because she is too worried by her current state to let her alone. Still, she’s there, looking expectantly at Arya when she just sits.

“It’s not like with the Seven,” she explains to her maid when she doesn’t seem to understand the mechanisms of it. “There are no candles or kneeling to pray. My father used to polish his sword; that was his way of praying”

She had seen him do it uncountable times and it had felt powerful in a way that going to the Sept with her mother never did. She never told Catelyn, but she felt closer to the gods when she went to the Godswood then praying for the Seven.

“Is it true Lord Baratheon set fire to the Godswood of Storm’s End?” Beth asks quietly, like just the mention of it might offend the old gods in their home.

“Yes,” Arya nods. Gendry had told her about it, the stories of Stannis’s profanation to any gods that wasn’t the Red God spreading throughout King’s Landing. “He has a priestess with him and she said that they’d do the same with the Great Sept if he took the city”

Beth is visibly troubled by this and Arya regrets saying anything. The girl was already terrified by the prospect of having the place she had lived her whole life invaded, she didn’t need to hear how even her gods wouldn’t stay in place.

The castle is filled with tension, Arya notices while she goes through the halls, the battle Stannis is bringing them leaving every soul inside that place on edge. Confined inside her bedchamber with only Gendry’s words, she hadn’t really considered how  _ she’d _ be caught in the middle of that too.

After supper—it tasted like ashes, like everything seemed to after the smoke overtook the Red Keep—, when she’s in bed that night, she sits with her arms holding her legs close to her chest and stares at nothing in particular, lost in her own mind. What would happen to her if Stannis managed to conquer the city? Would he spare her, offer her back to her family? House Stark wouldn’t oppose him in the throne, that was the reason her father had died in the first place.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Gendry says softly, coming closer to the bed after changing his clothes. Arya diverts her eyes shyly, still more affected than she’d like by the image of him wearing only breeches and the thin sleep shirt than shows as much as hides his muscular torso. He sits on the edge of the bed, opposite to her, and she can see him completely like this.

“Only,” she starts, their nonchalance not going unnoticed. “Only thinking of the battle that is to come”

“Are you worried?”

She shakes her head, “Not exactly, no. Just unsure of what would happen to me if Stannis won”

“You don’t think he’d let you go to your family?” Gendry watches her.

“It’s a possibility, but it might not be that easy,” she chews her lower lips, because when had things last been easy on her?

He’s thoughtful too now and she asks, “What would he do to you?”

Gendry looks at her slightly astonished, “I don’t think he’d care enough”

Arya contemplates his words in silence, not knowing what to make of them. He can’t think he’s unimportant like this to Stannis, not when Renly went to find him. They didn’t really discuss his connection to the Baratheon, but she couldn’t stop wondering… Gendry didn’t know who his father was. He was born and raised in King’s Landing, which meant the possibilities weren’t many. Renly was too young and Stannis, if what she had heard about him was right, wasn’t the type who’d produce a bastard—he barely had managed to conceive a daughter, by what she heard. However  _ Robert _ … well, King Robert was well known for his…  _ habits _ .

She hadn’t shared her impressions with Gendry, though, scared he’d think she was intruding. But if he was a child of Robert, that would be a plausible explanation for Renly searching him and ever educating him on certain aspects.

“I thought about something you said last night,” Gendry interrupts her considerations and she gazes at him, thinking that maybe he has more importance than he could see right now.

“What?”

“You said you were only one half of you here,” he quotes her and she nods, recognizing the words and the feeling. He’s still pensive when he says, “I think I feel like that too”

Arya watches his silhouette. Even his thoughtful face could be read as ill-mannered, his eyebrows forming a line of dissatisfaction. He had his arms crossed, making his muscles more obvious than ever—one more time, she looked away, because she knew that if she’d allow herself, she’d stare at him for  _ too long _ —and they are so unlike most men in that palace. Most of the soldiers were fit, but Gendry’s broad form tells something different about his craft.

_ Yes _ , she thinks,  _ he’d know the feeling too _ . Nevertheless she wants to hear him, so she says, “How come?”

“I’m not made for any of this,” he gestures vaguely with his head, pointing at their surroundings and he uncrosses his arms. “I’m not made to  _ wear _ armor and stand here, waiting for something to happen with unmoved hands. I’m not made for the pointless smiles and pointless people that think they are so much better than the rest. I’m not made to have anyone looking at me like they’re expecting someone else, like I’m Renly or… or Robert…” he sighs in heavy frustration. “I’m made to thump on a breastplate all day and never need to see a soul from inside my forge”

She can imagine it like she had already seen it happen, Gendry hitting with care at one of his pieces, covered in soot and sweat, surrounded by heat. It seemed so right…

“Being here feels…” he doesn’t finish, not finding something that grasps the sentiment.

“Incomplete,” Arya states and he nods quietly. She didn’t need his confirmation, though. She knew exactly how that felt. “Yeah, I think people don’t see me either. They see a lesser version of Arya Stark, they see my father, my sister, my family… a ghost of my aunt…” Even when they weren’t looking for someone else in her, she still didn’t feel seen. A ghost sounded so right that the words tasted bitter on her mouth. “I’m just a rehearsal of what I grew up listening I should be when I’m here, empty politeness for empty people and nothing more. I miss going around the kitchens, trying to convince the cookers to make more of my favorite foods instead of my siblings’, I miss riding and running through Winterfell, having lectures of History and learn numbers with Maester Luwin, sparring with Bran, laughing with Jon of something no one else found pleasant, taking Rickon to the warm pools of the Godswood. Giving flowers for father that he’d always end up giving to my mother…”

She could see every single scene she mentioned, just like she had imagined Gendry’s. But this time, they came accompanied by the melancholy that her memories always brought now.

Gendry seems to be imagining as much as her, because he smiles a little and says, “I’d like to see all of that. I’d like to see the other half of Arya that I’m missing”

There it is again, that sincerity that makes Arya breathless.

His eyes are so bright when she looks at them, in a way she never thought that dark blue could be. It’s a beautiful vision, his face so open, like he’s pleading to her to read him like a book.

Or maybe that’s just her own wishes.

Arya realizes how she wants to touch that face right now, to stare at the unusual color of his eyes from close, to discover if his dark hair feels as soft as it looks. She wants to discover every little texture of him, get as near as she can of his body.

Looking at him now, she finally understands. She had spent so long worrying about trusting her husband that she didn’t even comprehend until right that moment that she  _ desired _ her husband. That was the thing that she was feeling and didn’t know how to name. It had to be.

She desired her husband and she didn’t know what to do with it now.

* * *

While Arya felt like her whole world turned upside down by a single glance into Gendry’s eyes, it kept going like it was unimportant.

It didn’t feel unimportant, though. It felt like everything was changed by it.

Not Arya being attracted to Gendry, that part was probably there for longer than she could understand. No, the bit that changed everything was she knowing it.

She was completely alarmed at first, because she had never been faced with a sentiment as such. Growing up, she had always had in mind that it was a waste of time swooning over boys, she’d always end up obliged to an unknown lord and the notion itself already frightened her. So she had let the swooning to her sister and her friends—and it didn’t matter which boys they were looking at with romantic eyes, none would ever compare to Sansa’s betrothed, at least in their imagination. Even when  _ they _ had started treating her differently, it didn’t affect her.

That night, she didn’t know what to do when Gendry embraced her like every day. She wanted to hold him close, like she often did, but now it didn’t feel right.

In part because she wanted more.

It didn’t feel close enough anymore, to hold him like that. She didn’t even dare to think  _ what _ she really wanted.

And it felt like she was taking advantage of Gendry when he was trying to comfort her. That’s why he was doing that, to help her how he could.

He was so tender because he liked her, but it didn’t mean he was  _ attracted _ to her.

“You alright?” he asks lowly when he has one arm around her shoulders, probably feeling how tense and doubtful she is right now.

“Yeah,” she whispers back and he rubs her arm softly and rests his chin on her head.

She swallows and closes her eyes, trying to empty her mind enough to fall asleep, but Gendry is in sound sleep for a long time already when she finally manages to accompany him.

In the following days, she tries to behave the same, because what else was she supposed to do?

Her new found feelings can’t distract her from everything else that is happening around her when they are on the verge of a battle. She starts to get unsettled by the idea of not doing anything in the middle of a fight, sitting and waiting and being useless. However, she can’t do anything. She won’t fight  _ for _ the Lannisters and she can’t fight them.

It’s different for Gendry, she notices. They never discussed the reasoning, but he was a guard and didn’t have a choice. And even if that wasn’t the case, King’s Landing was the place he was born; he’d feel the urge to defend it from a man that was menacing to eliminate any trace of their gods from the city.

Still, it feels wrong that he’d be at risk and she’d be sitting with all the other ladies and the Queen, guarded and distant from what was happening—Cersei had sent an invitation that sounded more like a demand; she didn’t know what she’d prefer to do in a moment like that, but spending what could easily be her last hours with Queen Cersei and a bunch of other ladies that would try and pretend anything was happening wasn’t ideal.

She wishes she at least had a way to protect herself. The idea of depending on the Kingsguard when most of them weren’t trustable men… She’d do a much better job if she could take Needle with herself.

The days they are waiting for a signal of Stannis’s fleet are apprehensive. The whole city is holding their breath in anticipation, every weapon at hand’s reach.

Arya goes around the castle without much to do, trying to create things to occupy her time. Gendry hadn’t had any days off recently, too busy with the battle to come.

She tries to visit Lollys Stokeworth, Lady Tanda’s daughter. The girl hasn’t left her chambers since she was attacked and her mother claimed she was ill, so ill she didn’t want to see anyone. But that wasn’t the case, Arya knew. She was frightened and traumatized and, honestly, who could blame her. And over all of this, there were whispers that she was with child too.

In the end, she doesn’t get to see Lollys. She didn’t feel comfortable with people entering her bedchambers.

She visits Tommen’s cats. It’s clear to her from the moment she goes down the stairs that the Prince hasn’t called on his pets lately. The animals meow loudly at her sight and smell her feet, searching for food, and she asks Beth if they could arrange anything for them. She knows immediately that Tommen must be kept under heavy protection, hindered from walking freely on the Red Keep.

(When she comments on the subject with Gendry, he nods, telling her that the Prince was to leave the palace in disguise and go to somewhere safe and far from Stannis’s grasp. Arya raises an eyebrow at this, “And how do you know all of that?” But he just shrugs.)

And like always, she goes to the Godswood. Every morning is mostly spent there, on silent pray or just silent contemplation.

Since they started preparing for an invasion, there was no news of her family. She knew they were expecting an action from Robb, his words to go back North and take Winterfell back. She avoids considering what she’d do in his place. She wouldn’t wish a decision like that upon herself.

So she just quietly waits for something and prays that the gods will guide her brother in a much harder choice. She also prays that the dark spot inside of her that claims for retribution falls over her family traitor to not grow. Her blood thirst scares her.

She prays for Gendry, too. It’s those times she allows herself to really reflect on him and the storm of emotions he brings her. It’s been months now since they wed and she can’t deny how important he is for her now. She had known from the time when he had comforted her for the first time that he was marked inside her, that she wouldn’t let him go away from her life with ease. But now, she knew that she wouldn’t bear to be kept from him. She cared for him too, with the same sincerity she watched on his eyes more often now.

She prays for his safety in the battle to come, scared that he’s going to be put at risk to protect people that aren’t worth his life.

It’s in one of those mornings spent on the Godswood that they hear at last, the blood-freezing sound of a set of cornets, the announcement they have been both expecting and dreading. Stannis was arriving.

* * *

Doesn’t seem right to Arya that only the Mother and the Warrior would get candles just because they are on the verge of battle, so she lights one for each of the others too. She knows, because Septa Mordane taught her, that the Seven are actually faces of one God, and so she’s actually lighting seven candles to only one God. But still, if said God had seven faces, all of them should be praised equally, should they not?

She’s in the Great Sept like every other person of the royal court. It’s custom that anyone that wasn’t fighting should pray for those who were. She felt pleased to have something to do, even if she had already prayed to her gods that day.

When she’s leaving, she can hear a different melody from the anthems they were singing inside. The song now is one of men shouting, metal clashing and horses whining. She searches for Gendry in the guards that are guiding the court back to the Red Keep, and then she searches for him in the courtyard, but there are just so many men…

Her heart speeds a little. What if she didn’t manage to find him before she had to go to Maegor’s Fortress? What if she didn’t have a chance to speak to him before battle?

Before she can keep looking, Beth anxiously accompanies her while she meanders between the preparing soldiers, she freezes. King Joffrey is already on a horse, surrounded by three of the Kingsguard and making a big scene of carrying a sword. It’s the sight of the weapon that stops her in her tracks.

“Arya,” she recognizes Gendry calling loudly from the opposite side of the courtyard. She turns to him slowly, her mind still paralyzed by what she had just seen. “Thank the gods I found you”

He’s right in front of her now and she wants to concentrate on him now, but instead, she asks, “When did Joffrey get a new sword?”

Gendry looks away from her face to watch Joffrey’s silhouette from the distance. Something crosses his expression when he does, but he doesn’t show any emotion on his answer, “I don’t know, must have arrived recently”

“Is that Valyrian Steel?” she asks, the metal being too distinguished for her not to notice. He swallows.

“Yes,” Gendry hesitates now. “Sorry, Arya, but it’s made from your father’s sword”

She doesn’t say anything, just clutches her fist hard. Suddenly, she’s boiling in rage, just like had been after her first encounter with Tyrion. She wants to take that sword and use it against Joffrey, against every single Lannister that crosses her path.

It’s hard to discern all the voices around them now, the noise too much, but she thinks she hears Gendry shouting something in Beth’s direction. Then, she feels his hand around one wrist, pulling her in the middle of the crowd. She’s still too lost in her anger to understand where exactly he’s taking her, but she notices that there are fewer and fewer people surrounding them.

She hadn’t known what was made of Ice, her father’s sword, but she knew it should have gone to her family, back to House Stark, where it belonged. Of course, she’d never expected them to do that, but she didn’t think they would dismantle it to make a weapon to Joffrey. Ned’s sword was something that was so strongly his… The memory of him polishing Ice by the heart tree was so vivid; she always got back to it when she was thinking of home. They shouldn’t have touched that sword.

“Arya,” Gendry calls her and she focuses on him. They are in a building she had never been before, the rich decoration around a set of stairs going up suggesting it’s an important place. Since she hadn’t really paid attention to the path they took, she doesn’t know where it is exactly. “Tell me you’re alright”

She sighs, “I am. I’m just mad. They shouldn’t have his sword,” he nods and comes closer. She’s standing against the wall, not far from the door and he stands in front of her. “Where are we?”

“Just under the Small Council”

She looks around, impressed. “I thought the entrance to the Small Council was through the Throne Room”

“The main one, yes,” he states nonchalantly. She raises an eyebrow, curious about his knowledge of such a place, but he doesn’t say more. He’s wearing full armor now, without the cape the guards have attached. He removes his helmet and lands it on the ground before coming closer and starting fumbling with his scabbard. “I have something to you”

She stands straighter in anticipation, “When do I get to give something to you?” she says playfully and he smirks.

“I couldn’t get it earlier, they were keeping an eye on them but it’s too busy for it now,” he finally reveals his present, a smaller scabbard containing…

“A knife?” Arya asks with wide eyes at the prospect. It’s simple, without any ornament. A guard’s weapon. “Did you steal it from the armory for me?”

“Yeah,” he says sheepishly, his hand finding the hair in the nape of his neck. “I thought you should have something to protect yourself, in case you need it. And while your Needle is an excellent sword, it would caught attention”

She doesn’t reply immediately, her eyes still on the weapon. He gave her a knife. That he stole from the Crown. She smiles, feeling  _ so lucky _ to have him as her husband.

“Thank you, Gendry,” she takes the knife in hands and observes the scabbard. It’s not big, clearly not for the waist. By its length, she’d said it was made for an arm, but it has a buckle and she thinks it’s perfect to be used on the leg too. Arya stirs with the skirt of her dress and undergarments, raising it enough to expose her legs, covered with stockings. She places the scabbard where her left stocking is tied. When she readjusts the clothing in place, it’s not noticeable that she carries something there. She looks at him again, “Thank you”

He’s red and way too shy looking at her and she swallows, only then noticing that she’d shown a lot of herself to him. She feels herself blushing too.

“You’re welcome,” he whispers.

They don’t meet each other’s eyes, too embarrassed now, and Arya can hear that combination of sounds again, coming from the distance. He’d have to go very soon and she’d have to go too. She was going to be confined with the Queen while he was going to Battle. She wanted to meet him before it all started because she couldn’t let him go without speaking to him, but knowing that the moment had arrived, she didn’t know quite what to say.

She takes one step closer to him. “Gendry, I—”

She swallows, still not finding words. He’s looking at her again now, wide blue eyes that seem to search for something in hers. She doesn’t know what it is, but it gives her nerve to continue.

Arya embraces Gendry’s right hand with both of hers and holds it close to her chest. She can see when he gulps and steps nearer of her and they are so close now that she can feel his warm breath shaking locks of her hair. He probably can sense how fast her heart is beating.

“Gendry, please, don’t die,” she supplicates in a whisper, watching his face. He is breathing heavily, mouth agape and eyes fixed on her and her stomach turns. She raises their tangled hands and plants a kiss on his knuckles. “Please, come back to me”

The words leave her mouth before she could think carefully of them and she feels her throat tight, the other things she wants to tell him getting lost in the moment. She hopes that he knows it, how much he means to her, how much she needs him, how she feels like she wouldn’t get to be here if he weren’t by her side. She hopes that he can see it all in her face, like she can see that her words touched him on his.

He puts his free hand on the top of the others and takes them to his chest now, like she did before. When he opens his mouth, she expects him to say something, but he closes it again and swallows. She wants him to say it, the words that she thinks he’s keeping. She wants him to let her know he understands how much she cares for him. She doesn’t even need him to tell her he did too. He had done it a thousand times through his actions.

He shuts his eyes before saying, “I won’t let you by yourself,” and unclasps their hands, taking a step back before she can say anything or try to stop him.

Her back finds the wall and she uses it for support, while Gendry gets his helmet back. Suddenly, she wants to hold him there, stay hidden in that chamber she doesn’t think many people know and never have to face the rest of the world.

Instead, she just watches while he puts the helmet on. He stares her in the eyes one moment more and departs, no more words said.

When he leaves, she feels like half of her has gone with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh i felt that
> 
> this chapter was a wee bit shorter than the rest, but if everything works correctly, that will compensated on the next one ;)  
> my classes are starting again, so if it takes me longer than usual to update, don't get distressed! it's just uni getting the best of me (my time will come and i will win this thing, mark my words!!!!!)


	5. i walk the halls invisibly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i struggled a bit with this one and i'm still not one hundred percent certain on it, but... well, i think it's truthful to what i wanted, so there it is.  
> it's a little introspective too, but i guess they all are. sorry if this is not the arya we all expect in battle, she's kinda limited here!
> 
> anyway, enjoy it :p

_I walk the halls invisibly._

Arya’s heart is beating fast and she doesn’t know if it’s the battle about to start or what had just transpired between her and Gendry.

What she does know is that she wishes they had more time. It occurs to her that once more, that didn’t feel enough. A part of her is desperate to find out what is it that 's missing between them two.

She tries to swallow when she thinks that this might have been a last opportunity to do so.

_ No, Arya, stop! _

She sighs and tries to focus on what she should be doing by now, going inside the castle to find her way to the Queen’s Ballroom, where they were supposed to spend the whole period of the fight. She discreetly leaves that chamber by the same door Gendry just deed, finding a small and dark corridor she had never seen before and, at the end of it, the light of day. It’s a very unnoticeable entrance; she thinks it could be easily mistaken by a servant’s path. Interesting…

There are few soldiers on the yard when she crosses it now, most of them having gone to their stations. Gendry told her he would be on the top of the wall right above the kitchens, but she can’t see the place from here.

She finds Beth waiting for her in Maegor’s Fortress entrance. The girl looks pale and frightened and Arya laments that she has to be there instead of with her family at home. It wouldn’t be safer, she knows that, but it’d probably be more comforting.  _ But _ , Arya thinks, feeling the leather that wraps her new knife,  _ at least if she’s here, I can protect her if it’s needed _ .

“Where exactly is the Ballroom?” she had never had an opportunity to visit the place, since they didn’t host any ball since she had arrived in King’s Landing. She didn’t even know such a room existed until she got Cersei’s message.

“On the top floor,” Beth replies, coming closer to Arya and they both start walking, the maid guiding her. They say nothing, the air too charged with anxiety for words.

Every time they pass in front of a window, she tries to look outside, tries to get glimpses of the men. She looks for Gendry again, wishing she could be by his side to help him. Should she go looking for him?

But she can’t, since Queen Cersei expects her presence in the Ballroom.

“Lady Arya,” one of the newly arrived Kettleblack greets her when they’re by the large doors of the chamber. She hasn't learned to differentiate them yet, but she thinks that one was Osfryd and she dislikes that he’s standing by the entrance immediately. He’s not here for courtesies. “You may enter, my lady”

She does, Beth following close behind, but he stops her maid, “Not you”

Arya turns instantly, “I’m sorry, what?”

“She’s not allowed in there, it’s just for the ladies invited by the Queen”

“How come she can’t enter when she accompanies me to every appointment I have, by the Queen’s orders?” she asks pointedly.

“ _ As I said _ , my lady,” he starts, very slowly, like she was some stupid stubborn child, and the condescending tone has Arya immediately irritated. “She’s not one of the invited ladies, so she doesn’t go inside. You won’t need an escort inside the Ballroom. That’s the Queen’s order”

“She should have the right to go there to be safe,” Arya declares, trying to sound as polite as she can. She doesn’t want to make a scene in a moment like this. “She goes everywhere around this castle with me, but not when she’s at risk just as the rest of us?”

“’Tis alright, m’lady,” Beth whispers by her side, trying to avoid Kettleblack’s attention. “I’ll go down, where I should”

The girl is visibly shaky and Arya wants to scream with the man in front of her, but she knows it won’t do much. Even as she said her last words, she knew that if it’s Cersei’s orders, it doesn’t matter if she wants to keep her maid near her.

“You can wait on my chambers, if you prefer. And I’ll come to you if anything bad happens,” she promises quietly and Beth has a sad smile when she curtsies briefly and goes back the way they came in hurry. Arya doesn’t turn to Osfryd Kettleblack when she enters the room.

The place is bigger than most chambers of the Red Keep, losing only for the Throne Room, if Arya had to guess. There’s a giant table occupying the edges of the room in U form and it’s almost completely filled already. She goes take a place by the corner, looking around and noticing the empty spaces. Surely, Beth wouldn’t make a difference in a room that big, she scowls. She could easily just stand in a corner, since the pompous people she’d share a table with that night wouldn’t enjoy doing it with a servant. 

The Queen is not yet there, so Arya doesn’t have to worry about complimenting her for now. She’s not sure how that would have gone, angry as she felt at the moment.

She watches the people on that table. She thinks every important lady of the city must be there, joined by a few elderly men and children. Cersei had probably invited them as a duty, since she couldn’t care for half of the people inside that room. Arya has been in that castle for months and hasn’t seen the majority of them once.

There’s no commoner in the place too, she notices with an angry frown. She’s not the only one who had to let a maid go and is clear to her that low borns shouldn’t be allowed to take advantage of that protection. She wants to shout again at the unfairness of being in a room filled with guards and protectors and not sharing it with the servants when there was plenty of space. 

When the Queen is announced, they all stand up to receive Cersei wearing a white dress that seems completely wrong on her. Too pure and innocent. Arya rolls her eyes before she can help it, a little more disgusted with the woman.

* * *

They have been eating for what feels like ages. There are an endless amount of meals being served and Arya is a little revolted, if not surprised. Of course they would be sitting here, eating good food while people are fighting outside and the rest can’t come inside. She feels useless again, sitting there and doing nothing.

Her mind keeps going to the conflict and to Gendry. She has to try very hard to not think of him bleeding, unguarded, being attacked, because every time she does, she has the urge to run to find him.

So far inside the castle, it’s almost possible to pretend there isn’t a battle happening outside, none of the sounds reaching them so far. But, even if her thoughts would permit such a thing, there’s always someone whispering close to the Queen, telling her what exactly is happening. Arya wishes she could come near enough to hear the reports. If Sansa had been there, she’d be able to listen to everything, sitting by Cersei’s side as Joffrey’s betrothed. Surely, Arya preferred to watch from a distance if being intended to King Joffrey was what was needed to listen to the battle’s news.

Trying to avoid her intrusive thoughts, she keeps looking around and notices very early that Ser Ilyn Payne is standing in the far corner of the room, almost undetectable. The last time Arya had seen his phantasmagoric face had been when her father died and seeing him now makes her tremor like it’s that day again. He carries a long sword and she remembers very clearly when he carried Ned’s sword, tainted by his own blood.

“What is Ser Ilyn doing here?” she asks with a whisper to no one in particular.

“Here for the traitors, I suppose,” someone answers by her right, but she doesn’t know who. She’s watching the man with suspicion. And dread.

_ For the traitors. _ Like her father had been, of course. Like she knows she’ll eventually be too.

“Who does the Queen expect to betray her tonight?” she turns to the person that just answered and recognizes Lord Gyles, more drunk than not.

“Whoever they find trying to escape the city,” he hiccups and goes back to his wine and Arya is left to ruminate on that.

It had occurred to her one or two barely touched dishes ago that the castle is probably empty now. Every guard is being used, most of them outside the Fortress. The servants are probably in the basement, hiding and waiting for the worst. It would be easy to explore the place like she has been wishing for so long now.

The walls of the city, by the other hand, were being heavily guarded, protection against Stannis’s tropes being held not only on Blackwater Bay. It would be easy to leave the Red Keep, but not King’s Landing, at least not for someone used to sneak on guards.

It was  _ her _ case. She had been doing it for years before going South, escaping lessons, walking every bit of Winterfell when she should be doing whatever else. More than once she left the place to go to the woods or Wintertown without being caught.

She could escape the city without being noticed now. She was quick and practiced. But before she’d have to find Gendry in the city walls and that would get too much attention.

Still, she could explore the castle, find a way out and trace a plane for the future. If only she could find a way to leave the Ballroom…

Sipping on her wine, she watches the room, seeing people laughing weakly when the Moon Boy teased them. She hadn’t really touched her food and many hadn’t either, too grossed by the fight. The Queen was diving into her cups without much care, only waiting for new reports. It doesn’t seem like the last ones are disturbing the woman, so Arya thinks it a good sign that she too shouldn’t be worried.

She just needed an excuse to leave.

It came when dinner was officially over and people started to stand up and compliment Cersei. Some of the ladies were asking permission to leave and walk to the Grand Sept, to pray. The Queen conceded without much attention and while Arya doesn’t see her receiving that same answer, she thinks she can try to go unnoticed with the other ladies.

When it’s Arya’s time to greet Queen Cersei, her anger from earlier had been softened, her mind distracted by the possibility before her. Still, when she bows before the woman, she thinks about Beth’s paleness and has to breathe deeply to not show any resentment.

Arya doesn't have much occasion to see the Queen, even if they live in the same castle. Nevertheless, every time she is in front of her, she’s impressed by her obvious cold beauty. Even her appalled expression when she sees Arya doesn’t cover the fact she’s a beautiful woman, with her blonde hair always up in that fashionable way of the Southern ladies and her vivid green eyes bright with malice.

Once more, she has that face of disgust when Arya is before her. She never understood quite well why Queen Cersei didn’t like her so obviously when she had never done a thing to her. Even before Ned was considered a traitor, the Queen looked at her like her existence was an offense to her.

“Your Grace,” Arya says plainly, knowing exactly what are the lines expected of her. “Thank you for inviting me and offering your protection”

“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Cersei doesn’t seem to care about false pleasantries at the moment.

She knows she shouldn’t say her next words, but she still does, “A pity that the invitation wasn’t extended to my maid”

Arya doesn’t want to imply that she only cares for Beth, and not for all the others that could have been sheltered in the chamber with ease, however, she can’t let go of the fact that her maid was obliged to be with her all the time, except when she might benefit from it.

“I think we already have more than enough here as it is, Lady Arya,” the Queen states taciturnly, still clear in her distaste for her. Before Arya could continue on the subject, she goes on, “And I suppose you’re going to ask for permission to leave to the Sept too?”

Arya raises an eyebrow, “Would you grant me if I asked?”

“And give you an opportunity to pray to our complete destruction?” The Queen's smile is fake, so fake that Arya helps but to wonder if she’s that obvious too when she talks with people she doesn’t like in the Red Keep. 

“You’re mistaken, Your Grace,” Arya responds carefully and Cersei just stares at her with a blank expression, “My husband is fighting out there, much like every other soldier, and your defeat could mean his death” 

Queen Cersei’s mouth forms a straight line of disapproval. Of what, Arya isn’t sure, “And you care for your husband.”

It’s not a question. By her tone, Arya thinks she doesn’t believe her and she smiles internally.

“It’s a wife’s duty, isn’t it, Your Grace?” she conceals her amusement, trying to sound as neutral as she can.

The Queen goes back to her antipathy when she says, “I hope you do pray for our victory. Don’t think you’ll have any chance if King Stannis reaches the city, girl.” And she grasps her goblet in a conclusive way that makes Arya bow again.

Arya isn’t sure what that meant; what would happen to her should Stannis win?

She’s already on her way back to her seat when she realizes she hadn’t been directly forbidden to leave the Ballroom. When she turns to Cersei, Ser Lancel is whispering in her ear and she smiles. What perfect timing.

When she reaches the doors, Osfryd Kettleblack is still there, not seeming to care at all that she’s leaving.

* * *

One set of stairs it’s all it takes to the sounds of battle to reach Arya’s ears. It’s not very loud from there, but she can hear screams and explosions and her heart starts pounding against her chest. Like she had figured, it really was easier to forget one was just walls away from such a conflict confined into the Ballroom, but now that she’s out of there, the distraction that the idea of exploring the castle freely was gone.

She returns to thinking only about the battle.

She searches for a window turned to Blackwater Bay, desperate to get a glimpse, to put an image to those sounds, to make something out of it. She knows there’s no way to know what is really happening from there, but she wants to see it. When she does find a large window, her heart skips a beat in dismay, her face being illuminated by the bizarre tone of magic green fire and, mixed with it, large orange flames too.

_ Gendry is there _ , it’s her first thought.

There’s a part of her saying that she doesn’t know that. From that distance, she can’t see much but it seems that the major part of the blaze is on the ships, while Gendry was supposed to be supporting the walls. The thought doesn’t do much to comfort her.

_ He’s still out there _ .

He still could be dead and she wouldn’t know if it was the case for hours and hours.

It takes her some time to stop staring at the appalling scene. It’s hard to look away from it, even if at the same time, it makes her nauseous. There’s too many men out there, fighting a battle that isn’t theirs. She told herself she didn’t want to actually combat because it wasn’t her fight. But it wasn’t theirs either…

She closes her eyes forcefully, obliging herself to look away. She had to concentrate on her task, or else, her time would be up. It would be of no use to stand still by that window or, worst, joining the conflict at that moment. It was too much of a mess and she wouldn’t be able to find Gendry now and why else would she go out there if not to find him? 

Step by step, she descends the stairs until she reaches the courtyard level. As she suspected, she doesn’t see anyone, not even a lost servant or one of the ladies on their way to the Sept. She looks around, trying to ignore how louder the battle is from there and contemplating where to start looking. 

The last time, she had been walking around the Fortress too when she found the cellar full of dragon skulls. At least she thinks it was on the Fortress… gods damn her mind, why was it so hard to remember details of those first weeks in the Red Keep?

She starts by mentally listing the places she goes with frequency nowadays. She doesn’t remember seeing any suspicious ladders in any of them, but then again, she must have passed a hundred of times by that spot on the courtyard where Gendry took her earlier that day.

The thought stops her at her tracks.

If there was such a place hidden under the Council and that chamber with the dragon skulls, there was a chance there were other occult places and passages that existed around the castle. Where else could she end up?

“Focus, Arya,” she whispers to herself, not really caring about anyone listening to her. While it could be useful to find other passages, she knows which one she has to look for: the one she already knows the existence of.

There’s not much to look around, since most of the torches aren’t lit that night and the halls are more dark than not.

Feeling stupid for standing there, just contemplating possibilities, she walks straight to the northern part of the Fortress, opposite to the path she usually takes to see Tommen’s cats. If there’s a mysterious staircase that leads to a hidden chamber in the South, chances are there is one in the North too.

Most of the places are familiar to her by now, so she doesn’t have much problem with the lack of light. She pats the stone walls, trying to be sure about where exactly she is and, maybe, notice something that had been dismissed so far.

Initially, all she finds is the same doors she sees every day, nothing new. It’s dark, so she might have let something slip, so she starts again, trying to remember which door leads to each chamber and each corridor.

Arya has no idea how much time she spends on this. She starts to feel tired, which makes sense, since it’s been hours and hours since she woke up, but she couldn’t sleep even if she tried. But being more and more worn-out, she loses any notion of time walking on the halls of the palace.

She’s near the main staircase when she hears voices for the first time. It’s been long enough that she could have forgotten the Red Keep was inhabited, if it wasn’t the constant muffled sound of the fight outside. She’s far enough from the torches that hiding isn’t a problem and her hand goes straight to the scabbard, even if she can’t access it through her dress.

_ Stupid, you should have it in hands already _ , she curses mentally, trying to take the knife without making herself seen while she hears the male voices approaching more and more.

“…that’s not going to be smart, wait and see,” the first voice said, apparently coming down the stairs. Arya is in the opposite direction the man was going, leaning on a wall and well covered by the shadows, but her hand still holds tightly on the knife. Of course, someone from Cersei’s personal guard could just let her go and direct her back to the Ballroom or her chambers, but she can’t be sure if that’s the case.

“It’s not your place to say that,” she listens another voice responding and this one is more familiar, but she doesn’t recognize immediately.

“It’s true, though. And you know it.”

“As I said, not your place. Or mine,” the voices are further now, following in the direction of the gates of the Fortress. She waits a moment for more noises before moving and, when no one else appears, she steps out of the dark.

She had gone through the whole level twice already, and seen nothing she hadn’t seen before. It was strange, how did she find that chamber once and couldn’t find anymore?

_ Unless… _ she remembers something she thought earlier about the room under the Council. The entrance didn’t seem like much from the outside, and while she wasn’t looking for much, she wasn’t focusing on the doors she should have been. It looked like a servant's door, she reminds thinking.

They have multiple of those, little entrances that were meant to be discreet—or as discreet as a hole on a stone wall can be.

She finds the first one, again taking the way north, and takes the nearest torch in one hand, the knife still firm on the other.

She doesn’t immediately meet stairs when she crosses the entrance like she expected, but a small and narrow corridor that leads to another gate. She steps carefully in it, but doesn’t go fair, since the door is locked.

“Fuck,” she mutters half-heartedly, because really, she was more curious than anything. She doesn’t remember crossing any hallway that constricted when she found the dragon skulls, so that certainly wasn’t the path she took, but then where did it take?

_ Probably to something the servants need _ , Arya, she mentally tells herself with sarcasm.

When she exits, she returns the torch to its original position and goes to the next servant door and, like the last, finds things that more makes her curious than reminds her of the chamber she’s looking for.

She repeats the process for some time, taking the nearest torch, going inside each door and trying to recognize the place. She’s not sure she should rely on her memory alone, but there’s just so many stairs and mysterious entrances that it would seem fruitless to explore each of them. She doesn’t have that kind of time.

Every time she has to put the torch back on the place she took it from. It makes the process slower, but it’s easier like this. If someone was to cross the hall, she might not have time to get rid of the torch before hiding.

She’s almost by the main stairs again when she enters a door that makes her hold her breath. There’s a long hallway, much like others she saw behind more than one door, but this one has something different: an ornamented shield, painted with a beautiful landscape. The vision of that adornment makes her memory tickle and she grins, finally feeling like she might be onto something.

The corridor has more than one door, but she doesn’t go for any of them, because she immediately sees the latter. It’s darker now, so she can’t know just by seeing if that is the right staircase, but her blood is running faster in a way that makes her think that,  _ yes _ , that is the right place.

It’s a long way down. The torch in her hand is far from ideal to illuminate the stair so she could understand just how big of a stair it was, so she starts to descend, counting the steps, ten, twenty, thirty…

For a long time, she had lost the sounds of the combat outside, the latter was just too deep into the ground for her to listen to something. But gradually, she starts to listen to it again, the distant scream of men and blades.

She’s at 236 when a cold drift passes through her and she can see iron grids. The shiver that goes through her body is of excitement, the place being absolutely familiar to her. After months being barely able to look, finally she had found it again.

She can see through the grids—that she knows are gates—the distant format of something big. From this far, the torch won’t light enough to distinguish the exact form, but she doesn’t need it to know it’s one of the dragon skulls and that there’s much more inside.

She can also hear again, clearer than ever, the battle happening outside, and from there she can also smell the horrid smoke. It’s much stronger than she had imagined, certainly stronger than the burnings Tyrion had made around the walls of the castle in the days preceding the battle.

Had Gendry been in the middle of one of those fires? Was his one of the voices she could hear shouting from there? Screaming in pain?

The thought has her moving before she can actually think about what she’s doing and she walks ahead, wanting to see for herself if he’s okay.

_ You shouldn’t _ , a voice says inside her and she knows it’s true. She had that argument with herself a thousand times already that night. It would be impossible to find him before the battle was over and calling for him would only put him in risk.

_ I should have gone with him _ .

She’s in front of the grids when she realized: they are locked.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she mutters, watching the heavy chain keeping the gate closed. She should have remembered that. It was the whole reason she hadn’t managed to go back the way she came the first time and ended up walking on the streets of King’s Landing: the gate was opened when she crossed it, but someone had closed before she got back.

And if so many of the other doors she had come across that night had been locked, it wasn’t strange that this one was too.

“Urgh,” Arya grunts loudly, kicking the iron grids one time in frustration. She had been counting with this passage for so long, thinking that this would be her way out and it was blocked, just like all the others. She wanted to scream.

However, before she could, she hears voices and steps coming from above and her blood turns cold.

_ I’m going to fucking die here _ , she thinks in dread.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak a thing, doesn’t even breath, waiting for the person that will deliver her fate.

But the person never comes and the sound of steps and voices continues distantly and the battle seems to be getting louder.

Something is happening and she has to know what it is.

Forgetting the chamber with dragon skulls and its locked gate for the moment, Arya starts to go up hurriedly, anxious to find out what was transpiring in the halls of the Red Keep.

Had it been invaded?

She remembers of Beth’s shaken figure, all pale and scared. She had told herself that she could protect her maid if things reached a dangerous level and she had let the girl without fighting enough. Gods, that couldn’t be the case…

And Gendry… She really tries not to think what it could mean to him if the castle was being attacked. Arya knows that, objectively speaking, he could be seriously injured or dead independently of whomever was winning, but she felt a bit more comfortable when thinking that he was on the victorious side.

She’s panting when she reaches the top of the stairs, but not even her heavy breath is capable of stifling the mess of voices and steps happening outside. She doesn’t bother to hide herself or her knife still in hand when she exits.

However, the sight in front of her is not what she had expected. Instead of Baratheon soldiers, what she comes across is a ton of the same lords and ladies she had been sharing tables with earlier.

They seem all distressed and confused, as if they too were expecting to find the Keep completely occupied by their enemy. Their voices are loud, a dreadful combination of their panic that makes no sense to someone not participating in it. All she manages to understand is that We’re lost and The battle is lost, which seems to be the chorus of their desperation.

Suddenly, her heart is beating on that same distressed compass.

She puts the torch she was still carrying on its place and the knife back on the scabbard. No one seems to notice, so she grabs the nearest person by their shoulders, an old woman she had never seen before, and shouts so she can hear her, “What happened?”

“The Queen sent for the King and ran away, they say the battle is lost,” the woman is barely paying attention to her when she answers, too lost in her anguish like all the others.

Arya lets go of her and walks straight to Maegor’s Fortress gates, weaving between the people that apparently were just coming from the Ballroom, determined to see it for herself. She’s tired of waiting and not knowing what is happening, she was not built for that.

And while she’s at it, she needs to find Gendry too.

She finds one of the Kettleblack standing by the gate with three other Lannister guards. And the gates are closed. Her stomach sinks.

“Why are the gates closed?” she demands to Kettleblack.

“Queen’s orders,” he doesn’t seem bothered by anything happening around him.

“Does this mean the battle is really lost?”

“It means the Queen doesn’t want anyone in or out of Maegor,” it’s all he says without looking at her.

This has to mean they are close to be invaded. This has to mean the Lannisters are losing.

She waits for the bit of satisfaction it should bring her, the idea of the people that took so much from her having their life taken from them too.

But all she can think about is Gendry, out there. What if that meant he was taken from her as well?

Once more, she wants to run to the night, to search for him between the soldiers, and this time she wouldn’t care if it would be a near impossible task. She just wants to be assured he’s safe.

She stares at the gates, locked and protected by Lannister men. She wouldn’t be leaving, not without a fight. And even desperate as she was, she wasn’t stupid enough to fight four guards with a knife. Not when she wasn’t sure if Stannis would win.

She leans on a wall and closes her eyes, trying to calm herself. Because she knew that all that was left was waiting.  _ Fuck, I’m never doing this again _ , she thinks to herself, not even sure what  _ this  _ would be.

The memory of her sending Beth to her chamber comes back to her. She’s not sure her maid went there, but if she did, it would do her no good if Arya waited here, by the gates. If they were invaded, she wouldn’t have time to reach her chambers. And she had promised Beth—and herself—she’d protect her if things got bad.

She sighs in defeat, feeling useless for the thousandth time that night.

Then she goes to her bedchamber.

* * *

The wait almost kills her.

She’s by the window, trying to see what is happening out there, trying to understand something in the dark.

Her mind comes and goes between two thoughts, the words  _ Gendry  _ and  _ Never again  _ playing on repeat in an almost senseless way.

She was right, Beth was waiting for her there. Her maid looked so fragile, there, alone, and Arya almost regretted sending her to wait there by herself. But she seemed relieved to have Arya’s company now, even if they were just silently waiting, trying to make something of every noise.

However, the noise they expect, the loud voices of soldiers looting the Keep and searching for whoever they could find, never comes.

Instead, Arya sees something changing through the window. It’s darker now without the green inferno from before, but it’s enough for her to understand that  _ something _ is happening.

She can see the first light of dawn painting the horizon when a bell rings distantly.

Arya stands up immediately, knowing what that means.  _ It’s over _ . Finally, it’s over.

She doesn’t even care if that means Stannis was defeated or not, she just cares that it’s over and she can leave the Fortress.

And she can look for Gendry.

She turns to Beth, “It’s done, Beth. The battle is over. I’m going out there”

“What? M’lady, it’s dangerous, you should stay”

“I’ll be fine,” she dismisses, already by the door, “you can stay here as long as you want, the worst is over”

Then she starts running, unable to stay still one second longer.

She might not know for sure—or care—who won, but she thinks it wasn’t Stannis. The Red Keep seems to be strangely the same while she runs through its corridors, not one Baratheon guard on sight and she’s pretty sure that means he was defeated.

Before she has reached the gates, bells coming from the Red Keep are accompanying the ones from outside. It’s an agitated sound, like even the bell is celebrating the victory of King’s Landing. There are men joining them too, so loudly she can hear from there even if they are in the streets of the city.

The gates are opened and the drawbridge is down and Arya doesn’t stop running until she’s out, staring at the sky changing color, clearer by the minute, and the soldiers surrounding the gates.

They are Lannister soldiers, their red armor shining like they hadn’t spent the entire night fighting. She doesn’t linger on that, though, knowing who she’s looking for isn’t between them.

The courtyard is filled with men, most of them wearing the red armor she just saw. Her eyes search for the golden cloaks, which are significantly fewer, and her stomach is writhing painfully in fear when she doesn’t see him.

“Gendry?” she shouts when she’s halfway to the kitchen’s walls, the place he said he’d be, but still no sign of him. Most of the men around her are in good shape, even the ones that are visibly hurt aren’t that bad. She thinks there must be a lot of survivors outside, waiting to be helped and rescued.

They should have agreed on a place to meet when everything was over, but when would any of them think of something like that?

“Gendry,” she calls loudly again, still not recognizing his tall figure between the golden cloaks. No one seem to have anything to say to her, the confusion of battle too much for them to keep track of their own soldiers.

When she reaches the walls nearest the kitchen, they’re empty and she has no idea what this means.

She calls him again and again, this time coming closer to the exit of the Red Keep, not knowing if she’ll be allowed to go outside if needed, her desperation growing with every non-answered shout.

Where  _ is _ Gendry? Is he out there, too hurt to even stand up? Can’t he hear her? Had he been too near of one of those magical fires she saw through the window? Had he…?

“Gendry,” Arya calls again, louder and more desperate, trying to make her voice muffle the voice inside her head. She won’t think of this now, she has to find him, “Gendry”

She’s standing in front of the Red Keep’s entrances when she sees a mop of disheveled black hair and broad shoulders that have her heart beating faster in recognition, “Gendry!”

The head immediately turns to her and it really is him, covered in mud and ashes and blood, and still she distinguishes him. She thinks she’d recognize him through the end of the world.

“Arya!” he screams back and runs to meet her.

She does the same, completely lost on the sight of him, there, alive, in front of her.

Even when they find each other in the middle, they don’t stop, going straight to each other’s arms by instinct, like they’ve done it a thousand times, like they are meant to be doing it a thousand more.

It’s not a flowing encounter, him being still covered by parts of his armor, but Arya is just too focused on Gendry to notice that and the contrary seems to be just as true.

“Oh gods,” she repeats in relief near his ear, her face deep on his neck while she embraces him forcefully. His arms are around her waist, lifting her from the ground and pressing her with just the same force and none of them seem to intend to move. “Oh gods, we are never doing this again”

She knew she didn’t want to lose him and she knew just how scared she was to do so. It had crossed her mind uncountable times, the thought of never seeing him again, to having let him go without her. That was the part she could never bear to do ever again.

He’s whispering something too, but she doesn’t understand. Nonetheless she doesn’t need his words, his feelings are all too clear on his voice.

“Are you hurt?” she asks more firmly, but still not letting go of his grip.

“Nothing that can’t be taken care of,” he dismisses, not letting her go too.

She has no idea how much time they stay like this, entangled and contemplating the fact they are both alive.

When he finally lands her on the ground, they still can’t let each other go, Arya with her arms around his neck and Gendry’s arms around her waist. One side of his forehead is covered in dry blood and the rest of his face has ashes all over it and Arya can’t help but think he’s the most beautiful thing she has even laid eyes on.

She caresses his hair, her eyes never leaving his face. “From now on, whenever you’re fighting, I’m fighting too,” she announces, because he has to understand that she can’t leave him like that ever again.

His eyes flicker through all of her face, reading her seriousness, before he crackles in a fond smile, “Yes, m’lady”

For the first time since they collided, she is all too aware of his touch, the way his big hand rests with intimacy in her waist, how she’s completely pressed against him. She’s aware of his hair on her hand, sticky with mud and blood. And for the first time, she understands what had been missing all along.

Taken by a courage she could only assume came from the dread of losing him, Arya pulls his head down to meet hers and clashes their lips together. 

She can feel his initial shock by his stillness, but it’s not long until he’s moving his own lips to meet hers.

It’s still a little hesitant for both of them, but it’s also a sweet and involving kiss, their necessity to be closer and closer made clear by the way they clench into each other firmly, her hands travelling between his neck and hair while his own hands grip her waist.

Arya had never really been one to dream about kissing, but if she did, she couldn’t imagine how any fantasy would match the reality of having him like this. Even the dirt all over him added to this. She would never have imagined she should add mud or blood or ashes to her first kiss in her mind, but in reality, she’s glad they are there. It makes it all more real.

One more time, she doesn’t know how much time has passed. It might have been one minute, one day or one week, for all that she knows, because the only thing that mattered was Gendry, there, alive, holding and kissing her.

And when they disentangle from each other, Arya can’t stop smiling, feeling like she had just found something new inside her.

And, at the moment, it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr (https://aryaqueeninthenorth.tumblr.com/) and twitter (https://twitter.com/outlawgendrya/ (please do!)


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